KURA: One Answer to the Desire to Help

As we prepare for Steven Labarakwe's visit to ESHA member schools in the Washington, DC area, it seems important to anticipate the desire to help that is inspired, inevitably, when audiences hear about conditions in northern Kenya. With that in mind, this week we offer information on the Boma Project's new program, KURA -- Kids Uniting for Rural Africa.

KURA's purpose is to effectively improve the quality of education in the Laisamis District by providing textbooks and school supplies to primary and middle schools there. The Boma Project offers some background here:

Laisamis District in northern Kenya is one of the poorest areas in Kenya where 74% to 97% of the people survive on less than $1 per day. According to the Kenya Human Rights Commission: “Schools are insufficient, with enrollment of 25% of children in primary school against a national average of over 99%. Literacy and completion rates are also the lowest in the country."

The vast majority of the schools have no textbooks or supplies. A typical classroom, if there is a building, would have desks and chairs as well as a few pencils and pieces of paper that the children all share.

Photo: One of the better classrooms in Laisamis. Children share desks, textbooks and pencils. (Courtesy of the Boma Project; Kathleen Colson, photographer)
















Photo: A classroom under the tree in Lengima, northern Kenya. This school has no supplies or textbooks. (Courtesy of the Boma Project; David duChemin, photographer)

A typical KURA package, at $500, includes:

• pens
• pencils
• pencil sharpeners
• geometrical sets
• storybooks
• rulers
• graph books
• English dictionary
• Swahili dictionary
• composition books
• sanitary towels
• exercise books – ruled, squared and drawing
• crayons

A package of 35 textbooks for a grade 1 and 2 classroom, at $750, provides learning materials in English, Swahili, math and science.

Gifts to KURA are tax-deductible through Boma, which is a U.S.-based 501(c)3 organization. For more information about the Boma Project, see www.bomaproject.org or contact Kathleen Colson, Executive Director, at (802)236-3018 or kathleen@bomaproject.org.

Other ESHA's Kenya Experience blog posts about the Boma Project include: For the Answers, Look to Those in Need, November 7, 2010, and Prosperity with Dignity, November 14, 2010.

Claudia