Day 9: Education is power

Today, it was like skittles game or like in Agatha Christies’ novel “And then, there was none”.Everyone got sick one by one. Oh no!!! But…even though they were not feeling well, all came back to Red Rose to finish their work with the kids. Very proud of them!

Jeanne taugh them about the life cycle of plants and environment. She gave them an assignment to do where they had to describe in columns what can you ear for each plant they selected (leaves, seed,..). “They are learning so fast”

Dimitri showed them some monuments in Paris, the sports we are practicing in France such as surfing and skiing, the countries which have a common border with France, more french words,…”they are all so motivated to learn and curious”.

Gabriel presented the different functions of the us gouvernment, but got asked questions about the Cold War, the CIA, the Atomic bomb,…”I realized that I can have similar views on the US politics with someone living very far away from me and it gave me hope for the future”

Malo taugh the first graders a new way for calculating in maths and used magic coloring to make his lesson fun for them. “It was impressive to see how fast they understood the techniques I showed them, particularly at this young age!”

Paul demonstrated the 3rd graders the difference between a solid and a liquid, but also the principle of viscosity. He loved the respect they showed him calling him:”teacher, teacher”

Alice had a ballet dance class with 45 fourth graders in the yard. Not easy to coordinate this big group but she did succeeded as all the kids, boys and girls were following her steps with lots of joy. She was surprised”how happy and interested they were about ballet, eventhough they barely knew anything about it.”

Pierrick, still sick, arrived when we were teaching the choir the French national anthem “la Marseillaise”. We were so proud to sing with them, except myself who realized that after being 18 years in the US, I had forgotten most of the sentences. Booo!

After that, the team continue painting the library and went back to the hotel.

Our evening session tonight was so interesting as we invited Agripina, member of Uweza to talk about her sponsorship and how it helped her to grow and perform well. She described the challenges she had when she grew up which are similar to any girls in Kibera: “lack of basic needs, lack of attention and affection, house leaks, domestic imbalance (her dad had a new wife each time she was coming back from boarding school), no sanitary parts,..”. She said that for her “boarding school was a relief for me as I had at last 2-3 meals a day, a bed for myself, no violence around me, and material to study well.”

Then she explained how sponsorship is so important for most of the girls of Kibera who are becoming pregnant before the age of 18 if they are dropping school. “Education is Power. It teaches them what is right and what is wrong”. It help them not to cede to the sirens of the suddenly nice guy who is proposing some schillings to help her and then few later get her pregnant. Not dropping from school is one of the most important challenges for girls. The reasons are mostly because of lack of money for fees, but also peer pressure, rape, lack of sanitary parts, lack of basic needs which leads them to find another solution to be able to eat.

Girls are so vulnerable. Uweza created this program on sundays called Bright Future which gathers 25 young girls from different schools to mentor and guide them through their life.

If you want to sponsor a girl, make a donation of $300 for a primary school student or $700 for a secondary school student at

Crowdrise/projectkenya

Specify “sponsorship” in the comments

Today we had the chance to spend some quality time with the 10 kids we are sponsoring at Red Rose school and it was a precious moment!