Today, the 23th of September, we launch our annual school fee campaign. This is the
fourth year in a row we are launching the campaign that is aimed at collecting money for
the youth´s high school fees. For this year, our target is to raise an amount of €5000,
that, in case reached, will allow us to send ten youths to high school and four to college.
In Kibera, only 20% of all students manage to complete their high school due to families’
inability to pay the school fees. The average income for a household in Kibera is usually
around €50 and the school fees for high school cost €300 per year. Even though many
families prioritise education, this amount of money is for the majority of them too much
to afford. If the school fees aren´t paid, the students are sent home from school. As a
consequence, they end up idling on the streets, and the easy access to drugs and crime in
combination with boredom is for many youth a bigger threat than poverty itself.
This is what we try to prevent with the school fee campaign. The past campaigns have
been very successful and we have outreached our target every year. Six of our youths
have successfully graduated from their high school education, all thanks to our school
fee campaigns. None of the six would have managed it without the support we got from
our donors.
With a high school education the chances of being able to rise from poverty increase
considerably. With a college education, the chances are even higher. Since our youths
are growing older the request of a college education has appeared more frequently and
we are eager to take the educational focus one step further. Therefore, we will this year
put a greater emphasis on the college fees than we have done in the past campaigns. We
have now four members who are interested in college and, through the campaign, we
have the possibility to give them an education that will increase their chances of
building a life that consists in more than just the struggle of surviving.
WALE WALE KENYA 