Our enrollment program relies on high-touch community engagement via our Team Angaza, local young Maasai interns who identify out-of-school girls in their home regions, work with their parents to enroll them into school, track their retention, and follow up with parents of children who drop out to work to resolve the challenges that are keeping them from school. Since schools reopened from COVID in 2021, our 17 interns have enrolled nearly 2000 children from over 50 different villages into 27 different primary schools across Kenya’s Loita Hills and Naikarra regions. Nearly 75% of all children enrolled since 2021 who remained in class for three months continue to remain in school, a very high retention rate for this region.

Many Maasai parents desire education for their children but face significant economic barriers in sending them to school. Others are ambivalent and unsure of the value formal education will afford their children and families. We rely on a group of volunteers called Team Angaza to meet with parents and explore new options for their children. Team Angaza are local secondary school graduates, mostly female, who have lived through many local families’ challenges. They listen empathetically to parent’s concerns and challenges, then employ reflexive listening and guided conversation to draw parent’s to articulate their own conclusions about the potential value of formal education for all children. Often they visit homes 3-4 times before parents decide to enroll their children in school.

In addition to the direct role they play in enrolling children into school, Team Angaza members also offer tangible role models to Maasai parents of the benefits of formal education for girls. In exchange for their service, we pay tuition of a post-secondary certificate of each Team Angaza intern’s choice. Our first cohort have become outspoken champions for children in Loita and are now studying early childhood education, community development and social work.

TEAM ANGAZA