Program Updates January 2006
As we begin the new year we are extremely excited to see the advancement of Epico Jahns Primary School to now include Grade 4. The school was started in 2001 and each year we have added an additional grade (and classroom) to accommodate the advancing students. Epico Jahns Academy now has over 300 students in pre-school through Grade 4. The classroom for Standard 4, the teachers lounge, and office was finished this January. Construction on both buildings was started this past fall by a group of volunteer teachers from Indiana University , but due to a lack of funds they had not been completed until January. The classroom for Standard 5 has been started, but does not yet have a floor or finished walls.
Our nursing school is now beginning its second year of operations. We now have over 30 nursing students and 2 full-time teachers. We hope to start having overseas volunteer medical students, doctors, and nurses come work alongside our Kenyan teachers at the nursing school. Volunteers will not only provide teaching assistance but also assist in curriculum development.
We have also recently expanded our Microenterprise Development Program to now include more advisory and training assistance to the self-help groups. We have quickly realized how difficult it is to expand our reach if our efforts are primarily based on giving out grants. Due to the rapidly expanding number of microenterprise groups in our network, we have decided to focus more of our time on monitoring the progress of the existing groups that we have financially assisted in the past, and helping new groups start IGA’s (income-generating activities) by utilizing their own resources, knowledge, and talents. Volunteers participating in the MDP will be visiting with area groups to help them keep their projects organized, set goals for future progress, and assist with facilitating knowledge and resource sharing between groups that are operating similar types of microenterprise projects. During December and January we had an overseas volunteer meet with over 20 of our microenterprise groups.
Over the last several months we have continued our transportation assistance to the AMPATH program centers for PLWHA. The AMPATH program, which is run by the Indiana University School of Medicine, is providing free antiretroviral drug treatment and other medical services to PWLHA. The AMPATH program is extremely well organized and the group is running a massive operation out of app. 8 hospitals. Since there are no treatment centers near Bungoma/Kabula, we have been giving transportation assistance to the most needy PLWHA to area AMPATH program centers. We do not transport patients on a regular basis, but just when certain high risk patients need transport (about once a month). The AMPATH doctors have cautioned community development programs like ours against getting the patients too reliant on charity transportation because they want patients to become independent and self-reliant (since the charities will not have funds to transport patients for the rest of their lives). This program is an eye opening thing for volunteers to experience while in Kenya , and very educational for those volunteers in the medical field.
Through a very generous donation by a couple from the U.S. , we were able to purchase a used 11 passenger van for our mobile clinic and AIDS education programs. The van, which cost us $8,000, is very similar to the safari vans used by the main tour companies.
Other recent donations in December and January have been used to help finish the Standard 4 classroom, to buy a oil seed press machine for one of the bee-keeping microenterprise groups, to buy sewing machines for a group of HIV positive women to start a sewing and tailoring shop (they already had a shop on a main road for no rent and have two members trained on sewing), and to buy two KickStart MoneyMaker water irrigation pumps for two horticulture microenterprise groups (see www.kickstart.org).