The Friends of Kinyambu is a project in support of the school and village of Kinyambu in Kenya. The project has two parts:
1) Friends of Kinyambu, will provide regular support funds to the school to purchase resources and
2) The Kinyambu Primary School Library project, working with Cardinal Leger School in Saskatoon, is raising money to build a library.
__________________________________________________


Thursday, November 29, 2012

Ending year 3

This year has been one of consolidation and working on the organization of the project.  

Principal Guy Werbicki and the Cardinal Leger School students and parents continued to fundraise to build a library at Kinyambu Primary School this year.  We now have architectural drawings that will allow us to begin the building at a reasonable cost with the potential to add to the building in the future.  Filling the library with books and computers will also become part of the project once the building is done.

This year there were some concerns about having the headmasters from Kinyambu Primary School too closely connected to the project.  Schools in Kenya are administered as part of the government Ministry of Education and headmasters are often moved around and seldom have a long term stay in a community.  Simon Muendo Ngumbi, our contact in Kinyambu, is a long-term resident in the community owning a small farm there.  He and his wife are both teachers although Simon is now in administration in a different community.  Simon set about to form a new organization which is at arms length from the school and keeps the decision making with the parents and community members who are long term residents.

The new organization is called KCRED - Kinyambu Rural Education and Community Development and is registered as a self help group with the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Development in Kenya.  They have a bank account and are meeting to organize work for the new school year which begins in January.  The directors of the group have been involved with the project for the 3 years of its operation. Their first priority will be to finish the fence around the school and then to focus on the new library.