Why not build buildings, buy desks, or new uniforms? I guess I believe that if, if you sit a child under a tree, give her an e-reader, and encourage her to read everything on it, her life can be transformed. A new classroom will depreciate over time. Knowledge has the power to appreciate. That isn’t to say that these children don’t need classrooms, supplies and electricity it’s just that we have to start somewhere and perhaps by giving them knowledge, they will someday envision a way to help themselves. Kenya is ripe for change. Many here have glimpsed the possibilities via the internet and there is an overwhelming desire to use technology to progress exponentially rather than to continue down the long linear path that threatens to widen the gap between developing nations and first world countries. The hunger to succeed is great. The people of Koru have seen their neighbor Barack Obama become the most powerful man in the world and they often chant his slogan, “yes we can!” I’d like to believe that they can move from poverty and ignorance to enlightenment, but there is so much work to do
It is hard to imagine that, after 20 years without a visit to Kenya, this is our second visit in less than a year. We arrived in Nairobi the day before yesterday after a nine hour flight from London. It was strange how familiar it felt to make our way through the airport, duffel bags of school supplies in hand, and breathe that sigh of relief when I turned on my Blackberry and got a signal. Last June I worried about safety and how my children would adapt to travel in the developing world, this year I’m worried about how we can possibly do all that we have set out to do to transform the Menara School in Koru. The Menara School is in the Muhoroni district which includes Muhoroni town and Koru town. Menara is a public school which means that its teachers are paid by the government. Several years ago the Kenyan government decided that free education should be made available to all primary school students in Kenya, but instead of funding the initiative properly, virtually no monies have been directed to these schools. This has resulted in overcrowding, lack of supplies, poorly paid teachers and virtually no textbooks. In addition, many of the children have no food for lunch because government funds never emerge to buy the rice or corn meal that they need. Many of the children arrive at school at 7:30 in the morning and don’t return home until after 6pm with not a bit of food to eat during the day. Imagine how this affects learning. Menara has over 500 students, each with one tattered uniform that is worn six days a week, virtually no supplies, and a student-teacher ratio of between 65 and 80 to 1. On our visit last June we saw a few torn and tattered textbooks (about 1 for every 3 or 4 children) and not one book of literature in the school. The only school supplies the children had were a few exercise books (we call them blue books or exam books) that students use like notebooks. What we did see was a school full of children eager to engage in anything we had to offer and a headmaster who said yes to every opportunity for learning, both for his pupils and for his staff. During our visits to the classrooms we were overwhelmed by the challenges faced by the teachers – no teaching tools, except a piece of chalk, no light or electricity, small classrooms, small desks, overcrowding and little teacher training. We learned yesterday that the government allocates the Menara school 60 Kenya shillings per child per year for textbooks for every subject. That is about 80 cents!!!
On our last visit we came with art supplies, writing supplies, sports equipment, games and projects for the children and most importantly, E-readers which we hoped to load with books and magazines. Although many of the magic markers have dried up and the art supplies have been used, Headmaster, Tom Onyana is convinced that our visit resulted in an enormous up-tick in the school’s test scores last year, from 13th in the district to 2nd! He says, “hands on, eyes on, learning on!” It is hard not to be inspired when others tell you that you can make a difference. So, here we are again, eager to affect change, but this time, with months of planning at our backs and full acknowledgement that, to succeed, “it takes a village.”(Hillary Clinton)
When we first contemplated donating E-readers to the school we never imagined the challenges that lay before us. The concept itself was incredible – give a child with nothing access to 3500 books, yet when we purchased our original 45 E-readers to charge them and load them, we just had no idea how hard it would be to find content relevant to a child living in an African village, and we didn’t know the hours it would take to load multiple books onto multiple devices and the technological glitches we would encounter both in the US and in Koru. At that time, we didn’t even contemplate how to help the local teachers learn to teach with the E-reader as a tool and we had no sense that teachers and children here would struggle to turn on the devices and to navigate around them. We also began to worry about whether we could sustain the project once we started it, both financially and with human resources. How could we possibly communicate with the school, establish systems to implement E-reader use, train new teachers, replace broken Kindles, continually update content, find relevant content, and support curriculum development? And, now that we are here, our hearts are breaking as we see the limitations of having only 46 E-readers in a school of 500 children plus staff. The outpouring of gratitude by parents, the village chief, district officers, students, teachers and the Ouko family as well as eager requests by headmasters visiting from neighboring schools is inspiring but overwhelming. One visiting headmaster has attended every training session since we arrived, asked to take an E-reader home tonight with promises of its return tomorrow when he has also volunteered his time to be trained on the laptop we have just donated to the Ouko Library for use by the headmaster of Menara School. He has asked us to please remember his school.
Over the past nine months, Susan Ouko, my daughter Gussie and I have been working on building alliances that could help us to overcome some of the challenges we encountered with our E-reader program. Our most important alliance has been with an organization called Worldreader which is headquartered in Barcelona, Spain (check out Worldreader.org). Worldreader has the same mission that we do. It was founded by one of the three original founders of Amazon.com who believed that he could use his ties to the world of publishing to bring e-readers with relevant content to the developing world. After months of trying to connect with Worldreader, we finally established a partnership which has allowed us to purchase Kenyan textbooks and content written by African authors as well as some additional international content for our E-readers. We now have 208 books on each device and the technological support we need to push new content successfully! Worldreader has been working to forge alliances with publishers to get appropriate content donated or at significantly reduced rates so that Worldreader partners serving under-privileged children can access this content at these same reduced rates. In addition, Worldreader is currently working with USAID to begin the process of data collection so that donors can assess the value of E-reader programs in the developing world. We were blessed that a Worldreader team of three, Jennifer Baljko, Danielle Zacarias, and Zev Lowe, accompanied us to Koru last week to help us train our teachers and to attend our launch. They are fabulous, thoughtful human beings, each dedicated to the Worldreader mission and each caring and compassionate about creating freedom and opportunity for those facing social and economic challenges. Between them they have travelled most of the world and their personal stories and love of adventure are inspiring. If you’d like to read more about our partnership, please check out a future post called “Worldreader and what we learned” on the homepage of this blog.
Over the past six months we have also been working to figure out the right way to implement our program on the ground. Mama Ouko, matriarch of the Ouko family, has been working to build community support and to spread the word among district chiefs, district education officers, neighboring schools, parents and now even to members of parliament. Mama is an extraordinary woman, wise, dedicated, progressive and deeply committed to her community. As widow to the former Foreign Minister of Kenya, she has travelled the world but very much lives in her village. Visitors from all over come to her home to seek her counsel. She has been our extraordinary host for the past week and continues to open her home to us when we stay in the village. When we arrive at the house exhausted after hours of work in the school, Mama’s friends and staff have wonderful meals ready for us and lots of cold, cold water. We stay up for hours planning and brainstorming ideas to implement and improve our work and we seek her counsel about how to navigate the etiquette and protocols of the village. This is what has made us successful. It would have been virtually impossible to engender the kind of trust and willingness of teachers, students and parents here without Mama’s whole-hearted endorsement and work for the project.

Our work at Menara and specifically the E-reader project has emerged perfectly within the context of the Ouko Library project. Originally, we conceived that the E-readers would live at the Library and be used by visitors to supplement the library’s permanent collection of donated books. However, the library was not yet complete when we visited last June so, at the Ouko family’s suggestion; we introduced the E-readers to the Menara School. Mama and the Ouko family had always intended for the Library to be a community center and technology resource center so it made perfect sense for the Library to reach out to the community through the schools and to embrace reading and technology by implementing an E-reader project in the community.

In theory, this appeared very straightforward. We envisioned that the Ouko Library would simply lend the E-readers to the school and our project could proclaim success. We simply had no idea how much work there was to do to achieve real transformation.

In order to conceive of the highest and best use for the 46 E-readers we have, we have been intensely studying the Kenyan government syllabus for education which delineates the curriculum requirements for grades 1-8. In addition, we have been meeting intensively with Menara’s headmaster and teachers to develop an understanding of how the teachers approach the syllabus, how they determine their teaching responsibilities, their schedule, teaching techniques and resources. With only 46 E-readers, we have had to create a plan to rotate the E-readers from class to class during the school day so that most children in the school will have an opportunity to use or share one during English class and Library class. In addition, we have implemented two hours of after school reading based programs Monday through Friday for groups of 30-40 children at a time as well as four hours of programming on Saturdays. We have chosen to focus on classes 2-8 and we have asked the headmaster to agree to allow us to introduce literature into the curriculum as a vehicle for teaching English and writing.

(side note: The Kenyan government decided that English and Swahili would be the official languages of Kenya. As a result, primary schools are required to teach English but they do this as if it were a second language. Students often speak their mother tongue (tribal/regional language) in the first several years of school although teachers attempt to teach some basic English.)
After hours of meetings, we were absolutely shocked to discover that no literature whatsoever is used in the school at any grade level! Teachers currently teach from course-books that have excerpts and passages that are relevant to their particular lesson. We also discovered that the Kenyan government publishes a list of recommended supplemental literature for grades 1-8 but the schools aren’t given money for these books so they simply aren’t used.

It is hard to appreciate the risk that the headmaster has agreed to take. His school is evaluated solely on its test scores and embracing new methods of teaching and learning presents an unknown. Can his school actually move from “chalk and talk” where the teacher simply reads out of a course-book and writes on the board, to an entirely new way of teaching and a new set of materials?

After hours of class observation, I came to understand just how little preparation is done by everyone involved in the teaching/learning process due to either a perceived or real lack of resources and extraordinary logistical challenges. Imagine … in the current system, each teacher teaches multiple course subjects to a variety of grade levels (a system that makes developing curriculum particularly challenging!). The staff explained to us that, in order for teachers to do lesson planning after school hours, they have to carry heavy textbooks in multiple subject areas, great distances to their homes. Many of them don’t own bags so when it rains, as it often does, their books and papers get wet as they make their way down dirt paths and across fields by foot. The school day spans from 7:30/8:00am to 4:30/6:00pm depending on the age of the children. When teachers arrive home, they must assist their families with chores and cooking which is done over the traditional 3 stones and an open fire. The only light available to work once the sun goes down is often a kerosene lantern shared by the family. I am told that teachers who are particularly motivated will choose to arrive at school 2 hours early to use the textbooks/course-books there to create lesson plans for their day. Imagine the possibilities with the E-reader which can hold multiple textbooks and reference books and which can fit into a Ziplock bag so it doesn’t get wet! Teachers will actually have the materials they need to better prepare for class.

In fact, we observed incredible wasting of time on so many fronts. To date each English class has been allocated one dictionary to aid in teaching vocabulary. The course-book used by the teacher instructs the teacher to work through a passage that is read aloud by the class and to learn the corresponding vocabulary. The process currently used to do this involves: writing 10 words on the board, reading the passage, arriving at a new word, asking the student holding the dictionary to look up the word while the entire class of between 65 and 80 students waits (this could take 3-4 minutes x 10 words = 30 minutes of a 35 minute class!), announcing the definition of the word and then copying the definition onto the board. The only thing I think the children learn through this process is patience! Imagine… with the E-reader’s dictionary available at the touch of a button how each child could quickly access vocabulary and spend all that otherwise wasted time actually reading!

Homework is another challenge. Until our visit this week, teachers have had no access to homework aides. Math teachers have been telling me that they spend hours trying to create problems to assign their students. Homework assignments have to be written on the board by the teacher, word by word, problem by problem and then copied by the students into their bluebooks as they have no textbooks to take home to reference for homework. To date, teachers never imagined that they could access worksheets online and or that they could make copies of homework assignments to distribute to their students. Students have had to spend a huge percentage of their 35 minute class time simply copying the problems or assignments into their bluebooks. Gussie took it on as her personal mission to address this issue. Thanks to the laptop that our family donated to the Ouko Library for use by the Menara School headmaster, Gussie was able to train the headmaster and the visiting headmaster how to use the computer to Google appropriate teaching aides and homework assignments. She taught them how to email attachments and how to create documents. And, would you believe….on our last day at the school, in our efforts to find a safe and secure place to store and charge our E-readers, we discovered that the secondary boarding school (high school) next door to Menara, has electricity, a locked and manned computer room (very basic) and a copy machine! These resources are available to the secondary school because it is privately funded and students who attend must pay tuition. The secondary school has agreed to allow us to build a charging station for our E-readers in their computer room and to charge our headmaster’s computer there every night. They also agreed to make their copy machine available (when the power doesn’t go out) at about $.03/copy! Voila! Supplemental materials! One day, when we have enough E-readers for every child in the school, we hope that worksheets and assignment can be emailed to the E-readers so that students can have access to supplemental materials with the touch of a button! Until then, the headmaster can print and copy the materials they need. This is transformation!

Here is where I began to get overwhelmed!! How could Menara School be next door to resources and not think to use them?? Where is their entrepreneurial spirit? I realized that, to transform this learning environment, we would have to implement an entirely new way of thinking about possibility. How do we get that to happen?? Teacher Pam, one of the most inspirational teachers from Mama Ouko’s pre-school (this is a small pre-school funded by the Ouko family that serves pre-K through 1st grade and employs three of the most energetic and creative teachers in the district), stood up at the community launch and exclaimed that teachers who don’t work hard are stealing from our children!” But how do we get teachers to work hard if they aren’t innately inspired? For every three teachers that are inspired, there are 12 that are not. How does a teacher begin to think outside the box if they have only ever been in the box? Currently, there is no incentive for teachers to do lesson planning, to create interesting homework assignments, to decorate their classrooms or to create or find teaching aids. There are no role models or professional development opportunities for teachers here, and it just seems that it isn’t the cultural norm to make change. So, how do we fix that? The E-readers are a start – they inspire imagination by the sheer fact that they are technology. Most importantly, they inspire the belief that someone cares and that someone is willing to make an investment in the teachers and students of Menara. Perhaps they send the message that somebody out there believes these students and teachers have potential.

“Aspire to inspire before you expire!” Teacher Pam
The next step to transforming the learning environment of this village requires an investment in teacher training and teacher incentives to encourage and refine use of the E-readers in the classrooms and to improve teaching techniques and lesson planning. It was at this moment we began to realize what we might accomplish if we could bring teachers from the United States to facilitate teacher training and to teach curriculum development in the schools.

From zero to hero!

Today we began to train our new Project Manager, Richard Oketch. Richard was hired a team lead by the Ouko family. Together we wrote a job description which was placed in a national Kenyan newspaper and from which we received 68 applicants! The team interviewed many candidates and Richard was awarded the position. Richard has a degree in Education with an emphasis on English language and literature from Moi University in Eldoret and a Masters in applied linguistics from a school in South Korea. He grew up in a village not far from Koru called Siaya and has worked as an English teacher and headmaster in regional schools. Richard speaks Luo, his native language and the language of the people in Koru as well as English and Kiswahili. He knows Kenyan education standards which are referred to as syllabuses, and has written curriculum known here as schemes of work. He is computer savvy, a quick learner and thoughtful.

I was so worried – after meeting with Richard I began to question whether the school would welcome us again, whether there might be protocols set by the government that would retard our ability to initiate change. I had no idea whether the teachers and staff of the school would themselves want to make the investment needed to implement an entirely new way of approaching teaching, lesson planning and after school activities.

Visit to Mama’s school. Inspired by teacher Pamela who said she has been receiving calls from villagers and friends asking if they are allowed to attend tomorrow’s community gathering. She showed me the school motto which is posted above the door to her classroom- “Knowledge is power.”
She gave me her copy of the government syllabus which prescribes the learning required in each standard, or grade so that I finally had a blueprint for what is supposed to happen in a Kenyan classroom. She told us the story of her two sons in America who are at university thanks to her absolute focus on education. She told us about the standards she is setting in mama’s school and the importance of parent participation. She encouraged us to insist on parent support of our program at Menara School. Gratitude oozed from every ounce of her being.

After our visit to the preschool, we went back again to the house for more training and a meeting with Richard about his job description, reporting structure, and logistics.

At 4:30, Tom Onyana, the Menara School headmaster was available to meet with us and I was so relieved. Although Richard has a tremendous background in teaching and technology, I sensed that he wasn’t completely comfortable with my eagerness to make real change in the classrooms and I sensed that he didn’t imagine that the staff and the teachers at Menara would be willing to apply the necessary creativity and flexibility to make it happen.

We arrived at the school to cheering children and I actually started crying when I saw Tom in the courtyard. It was overwhelming to be back! I was asked to greet the crowd and the children broke out into a wonderful clapping rhythm to welcome us. It was joyful! We then gathered in Tom’s office in a circle – Richard our new project manager, the Worldreader team (Dani and Jenn), Susan, Gussie and I together with five of Menara’s teachers, and the headmaster. I explained our intentions – new Project Manager, launch use of readers in the school with content, work with the teachers to organize content, teach them how to use the readers and reference materials, begin work on curriculum development and plant the seed for Boston teachers to work with them in June. Tom agreed to close down school for teacher training and the community launch and to make his staff available for meetings and discussions whenever we needed them. We announced our gift of a laptop computer and internet access to improve our ability to communicate with the school.

More details here…..

So how do we stay in balance in Koru? Yoga in the morning and walks through the sugar cane fields and the lush countryside before sunset keep us energized. I brought my yoga mat this trip and was happy to have the barrier between me and the ants. Jasmine scents the air in the early morning and at night and the sky is streaked with pure orange and pink as the sun sets. Fires blaze as farmers burn their fields to harvest their sugar cane or to prepare them for farming and the smells of fire and smoke waft over the hills. We sleep so soundly in our sleeping bags under our mosquito nets until the rooster crows outside our window and the heat of the sun begins to warm our rooms. There aren’t any screens on the windows or doors and mosquitos are frequent visitors in the house, but somehow, we all seem to manage without a fuss. It is cool and the air is sweet at night so we have become quite creative about making our rooms comfortable by cutting old mosquito nets and duck-tape taping them over our open windows to create screens. And, thanks to Susan and Mama, we have invested in fans! It was so hot this trip that we barely noticed when the heater that heats the water in the shower broke down. We were just grateful to be able to rinse off at the end of a long day. On one of our walks, Mama took us to one of the places where villagers come to fill their water jugs. It has been so dry that the watering hole was simply a puddle fed by a pipe that is intended to carry water from a far-away source in the hills. It is not uncommon for children to walk more than half a kilometer with jugs of water on their heads to provide water for their families to use for washing and cooking. When our children return in June, I have asked for them to spend a day doing chores alongside the local children! They will collect firewood, carry water from the river to the compound and help tend the animals. I will be curious to see how this experience changes their perspective or their experience. My hope is not to create a comparison of the “haves” and “have-nots” but instead to enable the children to step outside of themselves in a very real way and to just experience how different life can be for other human beings. It is thought-provoking to explore shifting the balance of power. I wonder what the village children can teach our children? Gussie expressed her desire to create real relationships with the children in the village and wondered how to step outside her role of teacher and philanthropist to actual friend. She wants to put names to some of the faces and she wants to know stories of their lives.

Update: I have attached updates from our Project Manager Richard Oketch to this blog. Richard tells us that math teachers are extremely interested in acquiring math textbooks for the E-readers. They are also planning a workshop to teach themselves how to access math curriculum and worksheets from the internet via the computer that we have donated to the Library for use in the school.

went so far as to offer a $100 first prize, a $75 second prize, and a $50 third prize to the teacher who transforms his/her classroom into an active, engaged, decorated and enhanced learning environment. Is it possible that $225 could transform the learning environment of a school??

Unified theory
Tents set up in the courtyard of mama’s school. Bottles of coke and biscuits passed to the crowd. Some people arrived more than an hour early and just sat and waited.
Teacher training in the morning
Lunch in the hut
Community event in the afternoon – quotes from chief – I’ll come and find you if you don’t send your children to school. Pamela – from zero to hero, aspire to inspire before you expire, knowledge is power, education is the key to life- without it, you’re dead. Asked the parents to stand up if they wanted more and if they were willing to do what it take to make it happen. All the dignitaries hammered home that the parents have to give their children time to stay at school to read and time away from unnecessary chores if they are reading. The community wailed, hailed, clapped, danced, chanted and celebrated their chance to succeed. They raised the Kindles and decided as a community to make it happen because they now have a chance. The ceremony lasted for 2.5 hours!

Mama Ouko –

Meeting Samuel on the way back and sitting with the kids by the side of the road.
Shower, Shabbat and dinner. Conversation about Jews, politics, Israel, Jewish identity, meaning of prayer, orthodoxy, choices for women around the world, US foreign policy and USAID.

Meeting at school at 9am – Saturday. Teacher training, gussie play and taught them a Debbie freedman song, ali gov. teaching
Training teachers to train each other
Used Rashi curriculum map
Session training kids
Lunch
Meeting with teachers about curriculum development
Walk and visit to compound
Dinner

. Homalime is a sub-location in Koru and Menara is a village inside of Homalime.

Relationship with Worldreader:
Long distance
Partner vs consultant vs franchisee
Branding
Incredible people sharing commitment to making the world better and experiencing culture in its purest forms. Seeking adventure. Reminded me of me 20 years ago. Deep conversations. Helping each other, sharing assets and resources. Wanting to create a long-term bond. So deeply grateful for what they have contributed. Paid for content. Manuals, training materials. More work to do together.