Kenya School Project

During the Christmas holidays, a teacher in our school, Sinéad Ducey, went to Kenya. She visited a small village called Shirango, where her Father Dan Ducey, will be completing a charity project to build a school with the charity ESPWA.

This all started because Sinéad's dad Dan had been going to Kenya for many years doing charity work. While there he befriended a nun who works with the local communities called Sister Emma. Sister Emma rang Dan and told him that Shirango had become known as "The forgotten village" . They are miles from the nearest village, resources and the people had little access to basic human rights. This included education. Sr. Emma told Dan that the only way out of poverty is education so she wanted to build a school there.

She started a school under a tree in the middle of the village. For the first few days there were only seven children in the school. Sr. Emma then decided to set up a breakfast club in the school so that the children would get at least one meal a day. The school then grew to seventy five pupils.

The parents in the community came together and built a mud hut where they could have the school. However with the rainy season on the way, they are worried that the mud hut would not withstand the rain.

Dan suggested that a container could be sent with school equipment, medical supplies, food and clothes and other essentials for the village through the charity ESPWA (which is based in Dripsey Co. Cork) and the container could be used as the school.

Since that day the project has escalated.. They have now decided to build a stone building for the school so that there is a future for the kids in the village. As well as this the charity will be creating a centre for children and adults with disabilities and the container will be used as the office for this centre.

When Mrs. Vaughan the principal of Liscarroll NS heard about the container going to Shirango to help all these people; she decided that the children and families of Liscarroll National School could help. The children brought in huge amounts of books, crayons, pencils, copies and other school supplies. As well as this the children had a non uniform day and both staff and students donated so generously to the Kenya school project. These were collected in school on Friday the 13th of January and the 5th class students helped to load them into Dan's van and Sinéad's car. Both vehicles were packed to the brim!

The container left for Kenya on Tuesday the 17th January. It takes fifty days to travel by boat to the port of Mombasa in Kenya where Dan will meet it and make sure that the supplies go to the correct areas. Sinéad and Dan were absolutely blown away by how generous the families in Liscarroll were and really appreciate all of their donations.

When Dan travels to Kenya in March he is going to take lots of pictures of all of the school items that travelled all the way from Liscarroll to Kenya and changed the lives of the children in Shirago village.