7^th – 10^th July:

This week I visited a new project I would be working in called the Marian Centre. The Marian Centre is a home for children who are not living in suitable environments or situations. If the child is unhappy with the situation they are living in, they can be taken in by the Marian Centre to live for a certain amount of time depending on their situation. An average child will stay with the centre for around one year but other children who are living in extreme situations might have to remain for two years or more. While the child is staying in the centre the parents or parent are enrolled in a program to help them to build up their parenting skills and there is another program they are shown to which can help them to set up their own small businesses if the parent is suffering from financial troubles. There are 20 beds for children, 5 are for boys and the remaining 15 are for girls. The two genders sleep in different rooms. After the staff members working hours one of the staff members will remain throughout the night to make sure that nothing happens to the children when the other workers have gone home. This is also to ensure that the children don’t get into trouble or try to escape during the night.

           When the child is staying in the Marian Centre they are enrolled in the local school so that they don’t miss out in their education. If the child has not received any education in a long time, which can often by the case, the child can be home schooled for awhile to assess which class the child should be enrolled in. If the child is at a much higher age than that of other children at his level of education he might remain being home schooled during his stay because the centre thinks it is very hard for a child to go into school and to be put into a class with children who are all much younger than him or her. The Marian Centre has a teacher who comes every day to conduct home schooling classes with the children there. The Marian Centre also enrols children in a boarding school if they do not have room in the house for that child.

                                                                     While I was here I helped out in any way that I could. For example I set up an excel sheet which had numbers for all the names down the side and the months of the year across the top so the number of days in each month they stayed in the centre could be recorded. There was a total column at the end and in this I had put in the formula to add up all the days they stayed. This would then be automatically put into a total area for the amount of days beds were occupied for the whole year. Therefore if a new child came to stay all they would have to do is add his name and the days each month he stayed in the centre. It would then automatically add up these days and put them in his total column for the year and this would be automatically added to the total amount of days beds were occupied in the centre.

10^th – 12^th July:

My work was finished in Nairobi so I will be finishing the remainder of my time in Kenya back in Kitale. On my way back there I stopped off in Molo which is on the way because one of my friends from college is doing his work placement in Baraka Agricultural College. Also one of my lecturers from college was there for a visit. So for the weekend we all met up and went up to the highland area to go on a camping trip. My friend had been in contact with the school up there because the people working in Baraka College know them and they said we could camp on their schools land.

                                                                

     So we went to this school and this is where we stayed for the weekend. We met all the people up here who worked in the school and they were all very friendly and it was great that they were so happy to let us use their land. We spent the days hiking area the hills and spent the night in the camps. It turned out to be a great trip over and I am glad that I got to see another part of Kenya. The next day I got a bus up to Kitale to stay with the Good Sheppard Sisters again.

20^th – 25^th July: 

I spent all of this week in Jamanoor slum. Every day I would go with one of the Sisters and a development worker. The Sister and I would work with the children while the development worker would talk with the parents to try and figure out what type of situation they are living in and what are their main challenges or problems. He would then record these findings and we will all examine them at a later stage and try to find a solution.   

                                                                  The Sister and I have been working with the children by educating them in simple things. These include the alphabet, numbers and greetings in English. It is good because we can bring charts from Hekima Day Care and use these with the children. So far we have only brought a chart of the alphabet and have been using this to teach them. We would go through the alphabet getting the whole class to repeat each work after use and we would then ask student to come up on their own and to read out each letter. This has been great and they have all been getting better at it with each day.

                                                              For the numbers we would get the class as a whole to count up to 20 or thirty and then get individual children to do things such as count out load how many children are with us. For the greetings we have just gotten them to be able to answer “Good morning” with “Good morning Mark” or “Good morning Sister” and to answer “How are you?” with “I am fine”. In total there are usually 23 children consisting of both genders and ranging from 7 – 12 years old. I would prefer to divide the children into small and big so we might do that soon however we don’t have a class room and are just teaching them under a tree in the slum so this might pose a problem.

 We would usually teach them for around 40 minutes and then they would start be become bored so we would have break time. For this we bought two footballs and a few skipping ropes. We usually divide them into boys and girls and then divide the boys into big and small. The two groups of boys would play football and the girl would play with the skipping ropes. The development worker, the Sister and I would each take a group and play with them for the break time. However this isn’t always the case and sometimes the big and small children would play football together or the girls might play a bit of football and a few of the boys play with the skipping ropes.

After the break we would teach them for another short time mainly just going over what we did earlier in class to revise them on the topic before leaving them go home. Overall it has been great because it is building up our relationship with the children and they are becoming a lot more open with us. This means that they are more relaxed to speak up in class and they are also becoming better behaved. At the start a few of the children would try and leave the class and go back home but now it is not as often that this happens. They are also getting much better at the alphabet which is great because we can see an improvement with them.