Education

• How the School Began
• Expanding to Include Primary Classes
• Volunteering at Epico Jahns
• Sponsor a Child's Education
• Contact Us
• A Story from the Early Days(you will be redirected to our blog section)
• Support this program (scroll at the bottom for more information)

How the School Began
During 1999, Betty Lubanga, the wife of the Executive Director of Volunteer Kenya, and her sister-in-law Grace noticed that many children in the community were not attending school. They decided to visit with each of the parents to find out why. It was, for the most part, a financial issue. Although primary education is now “free” in Kenya , most parents still cannot afford the cost of uniforms, transport, books, supplies, or meals. Furthermore, older children cannot attend primary school without first attending preschool. Now, at the time that Betty and Grace were starting the preschool, there were the school fees as well as the other expenses of getting an education. This made it impossible for many families to send their children to school.

So Betty and Grace decided to start a free community preschool. Having no separate building and no funds, they used the tiny church in the middle of the family compound. This was a room smaller than our average bedroom, with a rusty tin roof, crumbling mud walls, and a dusty mud floor. Doors and windows are just open spaces left out of the walls. Betty, Grace, and then Betty's cousin Irene worked

Expanding to Include Primary Classes
In July of 2001, we began constructing a new preschool near the current site. Construction was completed during August of 2001. The new preschool has two classrooms and an office, cement walls and floors, with lockable doors and windows, appropriately sized chairs and tables, a teacher's desk and cabinet for locking up supplies, chalkboards and posters on the walls.

More teachers joined the school and the teachers began using the second room as a first grade (called Standard 1). As the number of students increased, it became impossible for Betty and Grace to continue to offer free schooling. They began asking parents to at least contribute what ever they could towards supplies and food for lunches. Many could not offer anything and Betty was forced to turn away children. It broke her heart every time. The enrolment kept increasing and in the summer of 2003, a third room was completed. The school, now called Epico Jahns Academy , has a pre-school class, and grades 1-8. As of 2018, there are over 450 students. Based on the school’s test scores, the school ranks as one of the best providers of primary school education in the western region of Kenya.

Volunteering at Epico Jahns Academy
Volunteering at Epico Jahns is one of our most exciting and rewarding volunteering experiences. Our local staff of Kenyan teachers is always very excited to have new volunteers join them in the classroom. Volunteers are able to teach alongside our trained staff of local teachers in their choice of Grade 1 through Grade 8. If volunteers have a particular knowledge in a certain subject area (such math, geography, or science) they are encouraged to focus their experience on teaching those subject classes. Most of our volunteers at Epico Jahns have been college or graduate students who are Education majors and are looking for a once in a lifetime experience to teach at the grassroots level in rural Africa .

We have also had numerous volunteers with non-teaching backgrounds. Volunteers have included homemakers, lawyers, retired professionals, businessmen/women, etc.  The main requirement is a love for children and teaching, and a desire to be a part of a dynamic and interactive classroom environment.

We have also had adult volunteers who were or had been teachers in their home countries. We even had a family of four come to volunteer and the wife taught at Epico Jahns, the two young children attended class at Epico, and the husband worked on the various other Volunteer Kenya programs.

The students at Epico begin learning English in pre-school and by Grade 4 have very good English skills Therefore, knowledge of Swahili is not needed.  Although only trained teachers and Education majors will be given the opportunity to teach unsupervised, the local teachers always welcome a helping hand and will assign tasks that are appealing to individual. Volunteers are able to contribute on whatever level they feel comfortable

Openings for volunteer teachers at Epico are year round except for the following time periods when the school is on break: April, mid November to second week in January, and August. The students are off for two weeks during April and August and so we prefer volunteers not to come during these months. However, if you really want to come during April or August, you could work in one of our other volunteer programs during the 2 weeks that the students are off from school.

Additionally, we offer teacher volunteering opportunities in schools and other institutions within Western Kenya -- from grade schools to high school. This arrangement can be done before departure or on arrival at the farm.

Sponsor a Child's Education
In a separate project, before the introduction of first and second grades at Epico Jahns, Elke Jahns, a member of Outreach Kenya Development Volunteers at Indiana University , set up a program with Betty to send fifteen of the pre-school children to primary school. This included the cost of uniforms, books, school supplies and other fees. Funds were collected to cover the first year. Betty made the necessary administrative arrangements, and sent Elke regular updates, as well as receipts and report cards. She was also kind enough to help the parents with the necessary errands and the children with their schoolwork.

That was the beginning of our "Sponsor a Child's Education" program. Now that Epico Jahns is expanding, this program allows a student to attend the school and have all related costs covered. This includes uniforms, books, school supplies, a hot lunch, and transportation to/from school for those who live to far to walk alone. Hopefully, if this program becomes a success, Betty will never again have the daunting task of turning away a child whose only desire is to learn.

The school fees we collect from the students are never enough to cover our costs of operating the school. The vast majority of our students cannot afford to pay the school fees that we are forced to charge in order to properly run the school. Therefore, we rely on the continued support of several past volunteers groups to help with our yearly running costs, as well as support from the Sponsor a Child’s Education program. Below is a summary of the Sponsor a Child fees for interested donors.

Contact Us
For further information on volunteering at Epico Jahns or to sponsor a child’s education, please email the volunteer coordinator at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Support this program:

We are also happy to accept donations towards school equipment, supplies, or teacher's salaries. The school is always in need of notebooks, paper, folders, pens, pencils, teaching materials, etc. We are also hoping to build a computer lab at some point in the future. All school supply donations can be shipped directly to: