A Drive for Education

*Where do you start?
*What's cooking?
*If you don't like the way I drive, stay off the walking path.
*The eyes have it.

It's hard to know where to start. Could you spend $1,000 (85,000 ksh) per student and bring in electricity, heating, air conditioning, a paved playground area, running-water toilets, and textbooks? Probably not; it'd be more expensive than that, and the students aren't accustomed to these at home, anyway.

What does the government do, in addition to funding Classes 1-8 teacher salaries, as meager as they seem? According to the financial chart at Nyakairu Primary School, the Ministry of Education provided 165 ksh ($2) per child in 2012 for textbooks and supplies. Ever bought a $2 textbook? Of the $890 they received for their 463 students, they bought or repaired a few (softbound pamphlet) textbooks, bought exercise books, supplementary references, pencils, erasers, chalk, and some maps and charts.

How does kenyakidscan.org help? By helping children want to come to school through high-impact contributions at low financial impact to student families who are helping themselves help their children succeed. Mark Daubenmier, teacher at Rift Valley Academy who is assuming the role of volunteer coordinator as program founders Steve and Nancy Peifer return to the U. S., cites low administrative costs. 

Donors provide the $.08 daily food cost per child, which includes purchasing and delivering (in comparison, a larger well-known organization quotes meal prices of $.15 per child); schools provide kitchen shed and cooking pots; and parents provide cooks and firewood. The Peifers' feeding program has one employee, Lucy, who personally oversees both the feeding and computer center programs. A native Kenyan and former teacher in one of the computer centers, she is paid along standard rates for her area.

The computer program has fourteen employees, whose pay is about $140-$160 each monthly, provided by donors. For the school family costs of cooking alone, the students receive hot lunches daily and two computer lessons weekly. For the 20,000 daily (460,000 monthly) lunches and fourteen computer centers, donors provide approximately $40,000 per month. In Fort Worth ISD, where I teach, that would feed just over half the students one day's lunch, with no thought to computer help. 

What's the outcome? Students attend class every day (>90% daily rate), excited and ready. They can focus on learning because they aren't starving, and they are learning valuable computer skills that increase their marketability and broaden their opportunities for employment upon leaving school. High impact, low cost: it's a pretty cool way to help. All this started because one man's heart was broken after seeing starving children during a private school's holiday food distribution, and he decided to try helping one school.

Which way did they go? 
On the way to one remote campus Thursday, we lost our way because the road disappeared. Lucy commented that, for some of the outlying campuses, they are visited by vehicles so infrequently (she often walks in from the highway, where public transportation ends; the food delivery truck only comes every three months) that the trails become overgrown and are hard to find. We were looking for someone to help with directions, and I made the mistake of photographing a cyclist without his permission. Apparently he was frightened, and disappeared down a path. A young woman, walking through a pasture, was apprehensive, but spoke a little in Swahili with our driver. 

We started driving along a walking path and encountered a man leading a mule cart. After a brief conversation, our driver began making his own road through the grass (and thorn bushes, I might add, while I was interceding in prayer for the tires) past a shepherd and through a herd of sheep and goats until he found a vehicle trail that he and Lucy recognized. We turned onto the trail and proceeded to the school.

These school visits not only touch the heart, they sting the eyes. The cooking sheds are mostly enclosed, because this is winter, and the people here really don't like the cold. It's actually about fifty degrees Fahrenheit, slightly breezy, extremely humid, and overcast. We think it may be preferable to the typical 100F we encounter during Texas summers, so we just put on a light jacket or sweatshirt and smile.

But they're in a 10' X 15' tin shed with a wood fire, boiling pots, and the door closed. It may be a little warmer (nothing here is sealed or insulated), but the eye pain from all the smoke is unbearable. A gaunt older woman is crouched in a corner, and her eyes are filled with tears; she doesn't even try to smile as she stands when we enter. The food smells good, but the smoke drives us out of the room almost immediately.

She and the other cooks are doing a great service for the children, but I will never be able to forget those eyes. Among the tears, did I catch a glimmer of hope?