Fantastic kit donation from St Edward’s School, Oxford

We received a generous quantity of donated clothes, kit and equipment during the summer from parents of pupils at St Edward’s School, Oxford. One of them was even kind enough to load the 63 bags of goodies into her people-carrier and deliver them to the freight forwarders in Sunbury-on-Thames. Unfortunately, once the goods arrived in Nairobi, they were initially delivered to the wrong place! All ended well, however, and they eventually found their intended home – albeit a little too late in the Kenyan schools’ term to be distributed. November, in Kenya, sees schools largely focussing on the end-of-year, and public, examinations. These take place amid such tight security that, at some of the schools with which we are working, not even our coaches were admitted!

As you can see, above, we have begun to distribute some of the donated kit to children attending our holiday sessions and these lucky girls are proudly wearing their St Edward’s sports skirts. The holiday courses have been so heavily oversubscribed that we have taken twice the number of children originally intended. This has, of course, involved the Foundation in additional expenditure: providing transport, paying teachers to act as chaperons during their holidays and providing lunch. Interestingly, the provision of lunch by schools is thought to be one of the prime incentives for many of the children to attend. It may be the only meal they would get.

The three girls, shown above, are leading a group discussion about social intelligence, one of the seven key components of our character education programme. Below, one of our cricket coaches, also trained to deliver the character education programme, joins in to make a point.