The photograph above shows some of the Osiligi mothers making Maasai beadwork for a small much-needed income

After more than two difficult years of drought, 2024 has seen a good deal of rainfall. The Maasailand of Southern Kenya, where the Osiligi Obaya school is situated, has transformed to a green landscape, and the few animals that survived the long drought have fattened up. Stocks of cows and goat are now being rebuilt. However, for 2.5 months around Easter, the rainfall was excessive causing a significant amount of flooding, loss of life and displacement across Kenya. Osiligi sponsored children were mainly affected by changes to school opening, and some were forced to stay at home as they were unable to cross nearby rivers on their way to school. Kenya has also seen quite a lot of disruption from anti-tax protests in the first half of 2024 – fortunately this caused no disruption to our rural area.

The Osiligi Obaya Primary school, which now also houses a Junior Secondary School, continues to give a great education to the poorest children in the community. The school has 10 classrooms and this number is sufficient to cover the Pre-Primary, Primary and Junior Secondary school. The school curriculum in Kenya is changing from one based upon rote learning to a more practical skills-based curriculum. Margaret, ex-headteacher from Scotland and one of our UK volunteers, is providing skills-based coaching to the headteacher and staff, including during a trip to the Osiligi school in February; the staff are now advanced in their ability to teach the new curriculum, as compared to most other schools in Kenya.

The school is doing really well in inter-schools competitions in sport and dance. Some pupils almost reached national-level in a dance competition in the Rift Valley area (see photo below).  Tracey and I had the pleasure of supporting the Osiligi school teams at an inter-schools handball competition in March. 

Osiligi pupils performing a dance from the north of Kenya

A new small class of 4-5 year olds started at Easter, taught by Teacher Regina, and can be seen in the photograph below:

The new baby class on their first day at school

At the other end of the spectrum, the first 23 of our approximately 100 sponsored pupils who attend different senior Secondary schools across Kenya, will complete schooling in November, after taking their national ‘KCSE’ exams. The charity is investing effort to determine ‘what next?’ for these students, and how we might support them. This is a one of the roles of our new charity Programme Director in Kenya – Daniel Sasine. Having previously led one of the top schools in Kenya, and I’m delighted to say that Daniel started working full-time for the Osiligi charity in January.

Among other things, he has organised for these students to receive a visit from a careers advisory expert, a speaker from the local technical college, and last week he organised a trip for these students to visit a Kenyan university (see photo below).

The secondary pupils analysing various specimens during their visit to Kenyatta University

As a charity, we would like to know how best we might further support the young people and their local Maasai community to build successful lives and livelihoods, through education. We therefore decided to run a community based consultation. After 6 months in the planning, this took place in March. 

We sought the views of pupils, school staff, governors, parents (mothers and fathers separately), and other key individuals from the community. The consultation was facilitated by an expert from the UK who went to Kenya, Daniel and 3 teaching staff. It was a huge success, with all groups really engaging with the process (see photo below). Now that the analysis is complete, we have starting to prepare an action plan. We will keep you updated on the output.

Female parents engaging in the consultation while a baby plays

You may remember the last year Tracey set up a social enterprise with some of the poorest mothers at the Osiligi school, who otherwise have no source of income. They make beautiful Maasai beadwork called ‘Eripare’, and Tracey voluntarily sells it in the UK, mostly at fairs and markets (see photos at top and below). All of the money raised then goes back to mothers and the charity. If you would like to see or buy some, please have a look here: www.eripare.org

      The Eripare mothers making the beadwork (top), and Tracey selling it (above)!

Our team of volunteer Kenyan Osiligi engineers continue to do an amazing job: They have now repaired more than 2600 pumps providing clean drinking water to more than 650,000 people across southern Kenya!

In a separate pilot project funded by the Swiss-based Eagle Foundation, the same team has now installed the infrastructure (solar-powered electric water pump, tanks, and irrigation systems) in 4 schools, and organised agricultural training for pupils and staff, so that they can grow their own food and vegetables at school. As well as learning valuable life-long skills, the pupils are benefitting from receiving nutritious meals from the school kitchens (see photo).  

 The children reaping the fruits of their work

One of our volunteer Osiligi engineers in Kenya, David Githae, is in training to climb 5,895m Mount Kilimanjaro in mid-September. He is keen to use this opportunity to raise money for Osiligi. If  you would like to support his fund-raising campaign, please visit his JustGiving page here: https://www.justgiving.com/page/david-githae-1713016418354

Osiligi engineer David and his fund-raising challenge to climb Mt Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa

More generally, one of the key things that we would like more expertise on is fundraising. If you have experience and knowledge of small charity fundraising, for example through grant and corporate sponsorship, and could provide us with some advice, please feel free to get in touch (jim.s.freeth@gmail.com).

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to Mr. John Curtin, who sadly passed away in December 2023. From its inception, John was a huge proponent of the Osiligi charity, delivering enthusiastic speeches on countless occasions, garnering a lot of support and many new sponsors. John also devoted many years to serving the charity as a Trustee. We are incredibly grateful to John’s long-standing contribution to the charity and to Kenya, and we will remember him fondly.

Thank you for reading, and for your continued interest and support in the Osiligi charity!

You are welcome to leave a comment below.

You can see previous newsletters here.

Jim Freeth and the Osiligi team.