As part of our trip to Karunga, we visited Karunga's Emanuel Kindergarten.
It has been 12 years since we built Karunga’s Emanuel Kindergarten and it’s beginning to look a bit worse for wear. With an increase of students the facility has now been split into two classrooms of 25 students and a new teacher Esther working alongside Mary. In order to utilise all aspects of the centre to cater for more children, the teachers office had to be removed and there is now no longer an area for storage.
Since Covid, more parents are unable to feed their children as they cannot afford it. The Kindy has requested that we start up a feeding program. The benefits of this would be that they don’t go hungry first and foremost and as an aside it will improve the learning outcomes of the children when they have a full stomach. Other repairs and items we will be fundraising for include the fence and swings renovations, repainting the blackboards, providing teaching aids (charts, books, writing materials), renovations of toilets, a classroom expansion, water tank and two large tables. The repairs and educational items come to roughly AU$7,300. The feeding program will cost roughly AU$310 a month or AU$3,720 annually.
While our time at the kindy was brief it was a great opportunity to meet the new staff, say "hello" to some familiar faces, and spend some time with the new cohort of kindy children. It is amazing to see the facility being used to its full capacity and gives us a much greater understanding of where we can best provide support.
After Karunga's Emanuel Kindergarten, it was time for us to visit Grandma Jenny's Training Centre. It was a bittersweet day where some difficult decisions were made about the future of the centre. You can read more about it here.
In case you missed it, our time in Karunga started with an amazing community catch up and some time with Zipporah Wambui. You can read more about it here.