Big hearted girls raise funds to help keep alive dreams of needy colleagues

By Kwamboka Oyaro

Kitui County: Every two years, students of St Angela’s Girls’ Secondary School in Kitui County organise a major harambee to help sponsor their colleagues from extremely poor families.

The planning is scrupulously done. Students jostle to make it to the list of ‘guests of honour’. Those shortlisted join other guests drawn from the teaching and non-teaching staff.

Then the school principal, Lenah Ngesa, 45, prints cards with a long list of guests featuring students, cooks, watchmen, teachers and the principal.

“When I give out the cards, the students jump up and down with excitement because they are guests,” says Ngesa. The school is planning to hold another round of harambee in first term next year.

As soon as they get the cards, the students get down to business. They start raising money from their friends within the school. “You know, I am a guest of honour, please boost my contribution.” And the fellow students give generously.

Visiting weekend
The school has no mid-term breaks but a visiting weekend every term. So when parents come to school, the students raise money from them.

“During the last fund-raising, we had invited the bishop to say Mass after which we started the harambee. One of the guest students gave her contribution of Sh10,000. The bishop had brought a cheque of the same amount and before everyone, he cancelled it and wrote a new one of Sh20,000,” the principal explains the seriousness of the event.

This particular harambee raised Sh287,000. It sponsored five very needy students. In fact, one student, an orphan in Form Two had fees arrears of Sh88,000 and she was the biggest beneficiary as this balance was cleared. Four other students, in Forms Two and Four benefited too.

Thorough vetting
The needy students are picked after thorough vetting. A committee comprising, among others, the principal and the teacher in charge of welfare analyse all the cases, interview the students and their parents or guardians.

“Lazy parents are asked to work harder and clear the fees. Therefore, their daughters don’t benefit,” says the principal. But parents or guardians who show genuine effort to educate their children are supported.

The fund-raising which has been held twice now has seen some girls excel. One of the very first beneficiaries is now a Third Year student studying Engineering at the University of Nairobi.

Last year, two of the beneficiaries scored grade A-minus. Another, who scored a B-minus, is an orphan from an extremely poor background.

Her grandmother takes care of her and her siblings.

Immediately after sitting her exams last November, she left for Nairobi to look for a job, any job, to help her grandmother and siblings back home.

She was employed as a house help. Her employer has a school going child. When the child is in school, she attends computer studies for two hours every day and has already completed one package.

But she is saving for the ultimate prize, nursing.

“I applied to Kenya Medical Training College and I am hopeful I will be admitted,” she tells The Standard in a telephone interview.

“From my savings, I have saved a little money for my fees. I also saved some which I used to pay my brother’s school fees.”

She believes her dream will come true. Yet there was a time she did not dream of a future at all. “You know, I looked at my background and the poverty, and saw no light at the end of the tunnel. Then a miracle happened and I was a beneficiary of our school’s harambee. Before then, I went to class expecting to be kicked out of school any time for lack of school fees. I hardly concentrated in class.”

Maryanne Mwendwa, 16, and Rachael Kimwele, 18, are also beneficiaries who are in Form Two and Four respectively.

My desire
Kimwele, the last born in a family of seven, is the only one who dared dream of joining secondary school.
When she was admitted to St Angela’s last year, she believed somehow that she was going to finish her secondary education but how, she didn’t know.

“But sometimes I cried when I imagined being kicked out of school. I only saw a bleak future. However, when my fees was paid, I was so happy that now I study with greater determination. My desire is to become an engineer and one day uplift my family from the shackles of poverty,” says Kimwele.

For Mwendwa, the bursary came at the lowest point of her life; after losing her father last year and accumulating fees arrears of Sh30,000. Her mother had died much earlier.

Mwendwa is determined to make it to university; if only to show gratitude to her schoolmates who contributed to make the bursary scheme a reality.

To boost the students’ efforts, the principal also aggressively looks for sponsors to give bursary to students from poor families.

“I write to the church, MPs, MCAs, anyone who can sponsor a child. The response has been good. So far, I have got full sponsorship for some 100 girls,” says Ngesa.

The student community does not stop at just giving school fees. Those from well-off families, and these make the greater percentage in the school, are requested by the administration to do extra shopping to share with the needy. And they are willing to help.

The items — such as soaps, shoe polish, underwear, toilet papers and sanitary towels — are pooled at the office of the students’ welfare teacher, Felistus Kyalo, who then gives out according to the needs of the girls.

At the beginning of the term, the students bring a lot of these items. In her office, there are a number of surplus items. These will be given out next term. But they are sure more will trickle in when school reopens. The girls have learnt the joy of giving.