Kisiriri Primary School Project

SUMMARY

The objective is to provide roof water harvesting and storage tanks, solar power and lighting, 36 new Ventilated Improved Pit (VIP) toilets with handwashing facilities and a shower room for girls, hygiene training for students, teachers, parents and leaders, roof repair and replacement, add facia boards and rain water gutters, renovate classrooms, solar power and lighting for in classrooms and a mentorship program.

BACKGROUND & PAST CHALLENGES

The Kisiriri primary school was established in 1968 and stands on a 27-acre plot registration number: CIS MARA/KISIRIRI/ 054 in Kisiriri sub location, Enabelibel location, in Olokurto division of Narok North, Narok County. The school is officially registered by the Ministry of Education with registration number G/PE/11363/14.

At its conception, the primary school was developed by the district education board with the idea that there would be a learning institution between the Enabelibel primary school to the north and the Eor Enkitok primary school to the south. The Kisiriri primary school was highly populated then, numbering up to 1,300 pupils.

Currently, the primary school has 652 pupils in the primary section, 340 boys and 312 girls. The Early Child Development (ECD) Center has 137 children: 80 boys and 57 girls. The school has 20 teachers, all of whom are trained to teach at the primary school level. Of these teachers, 4 are male and 16 are female. Of the male teachers, 2 are employed by the school and 2 are paid for by the parents. Sixteen teachers live in their own homes and travel to the school each day while the remaining 4 live on the school property.

The school has faced many challenges in the past. First, it is located in an area that used to be prone to political tribal clashes. While these clashes no longer take place, there is an unease among parents from different tribes engrained in the culture that has made it nearly impossible to engage them in working together to improve the school. These political differences have really stymied the continued development of the school. Second, male students have been forced to drop out of school because of low living standards and female students due to teenage pregnancies. Third, there have been isolated cases of adult men impregnating school aged girls. While some of these perpetrators have been taken to court, others have conspired with parents to force their daughters into marriage in order to avoid prosecution. Conditions have improved and continue to do so. The good news here is that these problems of the past now happen very infrequently.

INFRASTRUCTURE & CURRENT CHALLENGES

While the above stated challenges are mostly issues of the past, there are new challenges that plague the primary school. Geographically, the school is at an elevation of 7,800 feet. At this elevation there is a significant rainfall of nearly 71 inches (1800 mm) per year. Unfortunately, the school roofs leak and most of the windows do not contain glass. These open windows lead to decreased temperatures inside the classrooms and there is no heat available. This, in turn, leads to students wearing heavy clothing to keep warm, if they have access to such items at all. In order to keep dry, students are often required to stand up in order to avoid water leaking through the roof.

School sanitation consists almost entirely of sixteen (16) “pit” toilets – six (6) for girls, six(6) for boys, two (2) for infants and two (2) for teachers. These are essentially holes in the ground to collect human waste. The pit toilets for the school are old and dilapidated and are a potential source of disease. Not only are there an insufficient number of toilets for the students and teachers, but more importantly they are without water and hand washing stations. There are a limited number of functional toilets in the school, and not all students have access to the toilets that are available. This is particularly difficult for the female students who are often forced to miss school during their monthly menstrual cycle. In addition, the school currently has no access to clean drinking water. Water is obtained from rainwater puddles or from local village homes when available.

Another essential element for students to be able to succeed in their learning environment is for them to have a place to study, books to study from, and the caloric intake to keep their brains active. In the current Kisiriri classrooms, students are required to sit 4 or 5 to a desk. Desks are primitive and in very poor condition. In some cases, the desks consist of a plank stretched across 2 stacks of rocks. Unfortunately, text books are in very short supply, requiring multiple children to share them at a time, and often torn, tattered and missing pages from age and overuse. Lastly, the school staff are required to feed the students a midday meal. Cooking facilities at the school are very primitive and don’t provide sufficient variety and content to create nutritious meal options.

The current Kisiriri primary school has no library and does not have sufficient classrooms for all of its students. Some of the classrooms are small, wooden, and dilapidated and date back to 1968 without any updates or upgrades. The oldest of these classrooms were not considered safe and were demolished. Materials salvaged from the demolished building where then used to build new classrooms. The work was done by the parents, some of whom started school at Kisiriri primary school in 1968. The remaining building, while safe, is of very poor quality.

Overall academic performance at the school has not been encouraging with a mean grade of D+. While exceptions do exist, the hostility of the learning environment presents a challenge both for frustrated teachers and students who are eager to learn. With an improved teaching and learning environment, there is a lot of untapped potential amongst the students at the school. Several of them have been able to go to university after doing their KCSE exams at secondary schools. One of these students is now a member of Chelan Rotary and is eager to give back to his community of origin.

The School Board of Management has developed a School Development Plan for the period 2018-2022. A link to this plan is provided: https://bit.ly/2Lgt5Dy and has also been uploaded as a part of this Global Grant submission. This document outlines the school board’s plan for improving infrastructure and the academic standards.

PROJECT PLAN & SCOPE

Our proposed project will provide the following:

• Clean drinking water: Two rain water harvesting tanks will be constructed to provide a source of clean drinking water for the school and the community. Each tank will have a capacity of 350,000 liters (nearly 92,500 gallons). One tank will be for the exclusive use of the school. The second will be available as a backup water source for the school and a source of clean water to community members. Community members will purchase their water and the profits will be used to fund maintenance costs of both tanks. Collection of funds will use a cashless debit system, enabling funds to be deposited electronically and directly into the school’s bank account.

• Water collection system: New roofing materials, fascia boards and gutters will be installed on school grounds buildings to facilitate water collection together with underground piping to carry water from the roofs to the rain water harvesting tanks.

• New sanitation facilities: Thirty-six new Ventilated Improved Pit (VIP) toilets with hand washing stations will be built (16 male, 16 female, 2 preschool, 2 teachers). The facilities will include urinals for boys and shower rooms for girls. Waste water from urinals and shower rooms will be directed to a separate sump pit. This will ensure that waste water does not go into the VIP toilets. The Kenyan Government has a guideline that recommends a toilet: student ratio of 1:25 for females and 1:30 for males. By creating a lower ratio of toilets now, we intend to accommodate future success and growth in the school census as conditions and academic standards improve. We also plan to stock a small supply of reusable cloth feminine napkins to help assist female students with menstruation management as this is often a reason female students miss or drop out of school at an early age.

The VIP toilet is a “Ventilated Improved Pit” toilet. It is an improvement over a standard pit toilet because it has continuous airflow through a ventilation pipe that vents odors and acts as a trap for flies as they escape towards the light. It has the advantage of having a longer life than a standard pit toilet, there is a significant reduction in pathogens, odors are significantly reduced, and it can be built and repaired with locally available materials. In addition, it does not require a constant source of water.

• Electricity and Internet: Solar power (240vac) and solar lighting will be installed in the school computer room, staff room and head teacher’s office. These rooms are all adjacent to one another. The computer room has power from the national power grid, but it has been disconnected by Kenya Power. The school does not have the funds to pay for power and it is unreliable when available. Internet access will be available in these rooms.

• Existing classroom renovations: An existing small classroom building will be renovated. This will necessitate the replacement of the roof, re-building a wall between 2 classrooms and the laying of a concrete floor. The building itself is sound and is concrete block construction.

• New classroom furniture: Three hundred new student school desks will be built. This will alleviate the existing problem of having 4-5 students sharing a desk designed to accommodate 2 students. In addition, 14 tables and 75 chairs will be constructed. These will predominantly be used for teachers who currently do not have any tables or chairs. (Club project)

• Mentorship program creation: A mentorship program will be established for students, teachers and parents. The mentoring program will be developed by the head teacher, school board and Milimani Rotary and will be monitored monthly by the Milimani Rotary.

A separate Global Grant will be submitted for the second phase of the Kisiriri Primary school project. This plan will focus on Education and Literacy. The scope will include additional classroom renovation, a school library, access to the Internet, computer based learning, teacher eduction and training.

PROJECT EXECUTION

Milimani Rotary and Chelan Rotary will provide oversight for the projects included in the Global Grant. Chelan Rotary has visited the school twice and one of its members, who is Kenyan, visits Kenya every three months. Members of Chelan Rotary will continue to visit the school on a regular basis, as will Milimani Rotary members.

Project design and implementation for the rain water harvesting will be provided by Africa Water Bank (https://washinnovations.r4d.org/program/africa-water-bank). They will hire local tradespeople and will be responsible for the quality of the final product. The integrity of the tanks is guaranteed for 10 years.

Dig Deep (https://digdeep.org) will provide project design and implementation for the VIP toilets and handwashing stations. These plans will be approved by the Kisiriri School Board, Milimani Rotary, and Chelan Rotary. Dig Deep will hire local tradespeople and will be responsible for the quality of the final product. They will also be responsible for providing hygiene training for students and teachers and will provide follow-up visits every 3 months for a period of 5 years.

Other project oversight responsibilities:
• Project progress will be monitored by the school Board, Milimani Rotary and Chelan Rotary.
• Project reporting will be the responsibility of Milimani Rotary and Chelan Rotary.
• Solar lighting will be engineered and installed by Chelan Rotary.
• Student desks, teacher tables and chairs will all be made locally. The design and construction will be approved and monitored by the Kisiriri School Board to ensure a quality product is delivered. Cost will be borne by Chelan Rotary.

A preliminary implementation plan is included as a part of this grant submission.