Dear Friends,
In the best tradition of my uncle, Alphonse Gerwing, I am asking you to support a project in Kenya which will help the children and families of Kinyambu, a village about 200 kilometers east of Nairobi. The Alphonse Gerwing Foundation has agreed to take donations for this project and we will be working through Rainbow of Hope which has extensive experience on projects of this sort. Both are run exclusively by volunteers so you know your money will all go directly to the projects.
The project has two parts:
- Friends of Kinyambu, will provide regular support funds to the school to purchase resources
- The Kinyambu Primary School Library project, working with Cardinal Leger School in Saskatoon, is raising money to build a library.
In the spring of 2010 I went back to Kenya for the first time in 30 years taking my 23 year old son, Philip, with me. I had taught there for a term, 3 months, in 1980. Some things had changed but some seemed to be the same. Mobile phones are everywhere, a great boon to people who never had a land line system and who often found themselves in difficult situations because of poor communications. The secondary school where I taught has new buildings, an American foundation built them a library and they are about to get electricity. But the publicly funded primary schools look very similar to those I saw so long ago. Education is seen as the key to a better life in Kenya as in much of the world but government funding provides only teachers, a basic building and a few resources such as poor quality paper.
Before I left I was able to contact a Kenyan friend, Simon Muendo Ngumbi, a former teacher, who is now a district school officer. Simon’s wife Beth is a teacher in the primary school and they live on a small farm near the village of Kinyambu. As we prepared to go to Kenya we filled an extra bag full of school supplies crayons, colored markers, construction paper and some sports equipment. We presented our gifts to the school and the children were thrilled, especially with the soccer balls and Frisbees. I also gave Beth $50 and asked her to get whatever she and the other teachers felt that the school needed. We went off to see the sights of Tanzania and came back 2 weeks later. The teachers had started an art club and hired a local artist to paint educational murals on the exterior walls of the school.
That is a creative solution to the problems of keeping paper materials in classrooms that have no glass in the windows and where insect and weather damage begins quickly. We were surprised and pleased with how far a small amount of money and a few supplies could go. I determined at that time that I would try to help in any way I could.
At the end of our visit Mr. Stephen Kamenzi, the headmaster, thanked us for our gifts and asked if we could find a school in Canada that would be interested in a twinning project with Kinyambu Primary School. Through a family contact I found Cardinal Leger School in Saskatoon where the principal, Guy Werbicki, was very interested in working with a school in an underdeveloped part of the world. He made contact with Mr. Kamenzi and the children have sent letters and are very excited about contacting children in Africa.
Those of us involved with this project hope that you will see how a small amount of money can do a huge amount of good for the people of Kinyambu. Please specify if you want your donation to go to Friends of Kinyambu (support funds to the school) or the Kinyambu Library Project.
The Alphonse Gerwing Foundation
Ted Gerwing
14 Harvard Cres.
Saskatoon, SK., S7H 3R1
Rainbow of Hope
P. O. Box 2883
Wainwright, AB T9W 1S7
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