Harambee for Girls

Posted on by Johnson Posted in FundraisersTagged ,

 

Girl students at Mulundi Primary School in Kenya

Women from Mulundi Village have decided to hold a harambee to raise money to educate girls in the community. The following description and explanation is from Joyce, the woman who is coordinating the event. Janet Johnson supplied the questions and Joyce the answers.

JJ: Remember that vision that I was asking you to think about? There are people who don’t  have a clue what an harambee is and what people do and why they do harambees.
What is an harambee?  Harambee is a kind of team work putting your  efforts together to carry out a certain task. Harambee is just like asking for  assistance where an individual person cannot make it alone.
Why are you doing it?
We are doing the harambee because:-
  1. We want to assist our children who are not able to further their O level education
    and they are poor and bright.
  2. We want to uplift the living standard of the people in our community eradicate
    poverty.
  3. We want to assist those who are not able to do it alone.
Why is it necessary? It is necessary because is the only way to handle this task of poor girl  education.
Everyone knows the value of education, why can’t they just send their kids to school  (remember here, there is free high sch. education)? There is no free high school education in Kenya what is there is free primary  education for high school the government pays only  Ksh. 10,000 per year and this is not enough for fees so  the parents have to put their hands in their pockets to pay for the extra balances.
Why are you raising funds for only girls?  Our main target is girl child because our  believe since those old days girls were taken to be preserved for marriages and  they were not taken to school so we want our community to know that girls have a
right of education.
Secondly I have done a survey and realized that the families with an educated girls have  brighter future and the family is well organized but those with boys most of  them when they get married they forget about their parents and stay in town with  their wives. But for a girl even if she gets married they don’t forget their  parents and their people e.g. Like yourself.
How have you benefited from being an educated girl/woman? I have benefited in  several ways.
  1. I have been able to get a job thus enabling me to care for my parents even without  depending on my husband
  2. The education enables me to fit in many and  different areas
  3. It has enabled me to know my rights as a woman
When is the need educating girls going to be met? As long as there is a girl child  born in this world and poverty and war are not overcome. In  our country we a now focusing our work and dedication towards the vision 2030  and I think by this time every home especially in our community Mulundi shall have understood the need of educating  girls child e.g. in our Catholic church Mulundi we took one girl from Mulundi  to sponsor her on O level  education, We took the girl at St Angelas girls secondary school and  she is performing very well in fact last term  she got all the subject A’s this girls is a graduate material obvious and I think after the completion of her  education she will bring a very being impact on girl child education.
We also have another girl at Muthale being sponsored partly by Catholic church she  is in Form four and she is very bright she is also a university material.
Briefly according to my survey in the coming future Mulundi is going to have very smart  educated girls and this will end the need of girl child education.
How are you going to make people come to the harambee?
  1. Invite them by invitation cards
  2. Announcing in the public areas like churches
  3. And since I know this is a demand driven exercise people will be willing to  participate because is very much touching especially the women.
What is your goal?
  1. To educate girls up to university level
  2. By vision 2030 to see our beneficiaries (girls) enjoying the fruits of their  education.
  3. To reduce poverty in our community by 50% through girl child education by  2030
What are you going to do after you raise these funds?
We will select the bright and poor girls from our community and pay their school  fees depending on the amount we shall raise and we would like to start with the  girl from form one.  We shall only be paying the school fees and the parent will cater for personal items/pocket money
of which I think they can.

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