Dear All,

Important Charity Announcement (January 2025)

Happy new year!

With your generous support, and the dedication of our school staff and charity volunteers in Kenya and in the UK, the Osiligi charity has made a huge impact to the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in Olepolos and across Kenya.

Our Achievements

• The charity has provided a first-class primary education to about 350 children and has enabled around 100 children to obtain a secondary education at some of the best schools in Kenya.
• The charity has repaired more than 2,700 hand and electric pumps in southern Kenya, restoring clean water to more than 750,000 people.
• The charity is now helping schools in Kenya to grow their own food self-sufficiently.

In early 2024, we undertook a consultation with the Maasai community in which the charity operates. This identified a clear desire and need for relevant skill developments for community members of all ages, from children to adults.  There are few opportunities for employment, therefore it is important to support income-generation skills.

During the past year, we have been assessing how we can take the charity forward into the future, building upon these great achievements. Two key drivers are:

• To have even greater impact on the most disadvantaged people in Kenya
• To ensure the charity is fit and secure for the long-term

We have therefore expanded our objectives:

• As well as continuing to provide an excellent primary and secondary education to the Maasai community, we will strive to provide opportunities for positive destinations for pupils after their school journey has finished. We aim to provide vocational/skills training (on site), assist them to find work experience and work, and/or help them into further academic education. This will provide opportunities for these young adults to build successful futures for themselves and to bring their families out of poverty.

• We will build a Community Learning Centre which will provide learning resources and skills development for the wider community of all ages. This will help mothers and fathers to set up new revenue-generating initiatives to help them to provide for their families.

• We will integrate our different strands (education, water provision and agriculture) onto one operational site and management structure in Kenya.

• We aim for this ‘project’ to be sustainable long-term, to be aligned with local and national priorities, and for our teams in Kenya and in the UK to work together as an equal partnership. 

How will we achieve this?

• We have recently formed a new Kenyan foundation with a highly skilled board of professionals who are well-equipped and committed to help fulfil these enhanced objectives. The new foundation is a registered Kenyan Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) and is called Together With Kenya, or TWK Kenya for short.

• We are excited to announce that TWK Kenya has purchased an 8 acre plot of land approximately 5km from the current primary school. 

• On this new site, we will build facilities for a combined primary and junior secondary school, a small technical college and an adult learning centre.  Water projects will also be coordinated from here.

• We aim to start building in February 2025, and hope that the initial primary and junior secondary school will be up and running by January 2026.

• When the new school is ready, all sponsored primary and junior secondary pupils will have the opportunity to transfer across from the current school. We hope that the many of our excellent staff will be able to join us. 

• In the UK, we will rename the UK charity from ‘Osiligi Charity Projects’ to ‘Together With Kenya UK’ (TWK UK). We hope you like this new name!

• We are currently expanding the size of our board of UK Trustees to strengthen it in key areas.

• TWK UK and TWK Kenya will work hand-in-hand, in close partnership.

Although it will be sad to leave the current school, which some of you have made very significant contributions to, owning our own land will give us the opportunity to have our own purpose built complex and secure our future.  Due to the current land being too small to develop any further, the lease expiring and local intractable issues, the current school does not provide us with the security we need. 

Importantly, we have already secured new funds (from private donors and a grant) sufficient for the purchase of the new land, and for a significant portion of our building programme. The remainder will be raised from new sources, including corporate funding and grants. importantly this will not come from sponsor funds – your sponsorship of the school children is still critical.

What happens next?

• The land has been cleared, and architectural plans are currently being drawn up. We anticipate it will take about a year to build the primary and junior secondary school. The other building programmes will follow this.

• Until then, sponsored education will continue as normal at the current Osiligi school.

• Please continue to sponsor your child as normal. Sponsored children will all have the opportunity to transfer to the new school when it is ready.

• We are aiming to launch the rebranded UK charity Together With Kenya (TWK) UK in 2025 but will let you know as soon as we have a date for this exciting change.  This will be accompanied by a new website and contact details.

• We will expand and strengthen our UK board of Trustees in early 2025. 

Our two founders, myself, the entire UK management team, and our new Kenyan board are very excited about our expanded future plans. We believe that Together With Kenya will extend the impact of the charity, aligns with the Maasai community needs, and importantly will provide a stable future for the community and the project.

In early January, my charity colleague Margaret Thomson and I will be in Kenya to share these exciting plans with the local community. After the trip, we will launch a dedicated Q&A page on our website in February. We will let you know when this is live, and hope that this may provide answers to some of the questions you may have.

After that, we will keep you updated as details emerge over the coming months.

We hope that you will be with us on the next stage of this exciting journey!

With best wishes,

Jim Freeth, Chair of the Trustees (Osiligi Charity Projects), and the Osiligi management team.