EnglishKenyaPAL Network
Two hours from Nairobi, Ndindiruku spreads across 90,000 acres and is home to 7000 residents who take pride in it being one of the largest villages in Central and East Africa. PAL Network, Zizi Afrique Foundation, Uwezo Tanzania and ASER Nepal made our first stop here to kick off the My Village Project (MVP), a two-year, multi-country pilot. Dr. John Mugo’s home in the Plan B sub-section of the village served as our planning and learning headquarters for three days between May 11-13, 2022.
The ‘whole village’ approach of the My Village Project aims to create a movement where communities help children learn better. The project builds on PAL Network’s ethos of using evidence from Citizen-led Assessments about children’s learning levels to help them develop reading and basic maths competence within 40-50 days. The network’s Level-based Teaching Learning remedial interventions are based on Pratham’s Teaching at the Right Level pedagogy and have been adapted and adopted across eight PAL countries.
Four college-going students volunteered to assess 280 children in Ndindiruku. 60% of the children could read a grade-2 level text, and only 50% could correctly solve a simple division problem. When asked about their experience, the volunteers shared their surprise; they did not expect such low learning levels. The village has a large public primary school and a private school. They too had assumed that school attendance leads to the development of foundational competencies in all children. In addition to serving as a barometer to gauge the learning status of children residing in a village, our assessments also help set the stage for a community-wide understanding of their children’s learning needs. Since the tools are simple and easy to understand (children can read and do basic maths at different levels), parents and community members can appreciate and accept the results. A community-wide dissemination of the results also helped us build dialogue to discover related challenges and implement changes to support children’s learning throughout the target enumeration areas in the village.
David, a volunteer who conducted surveys throughout the central enumeration area, engaged the community members in a village-wide deliberation about the results. Parents and other participants believed the results but mostly chalked it up to poor school infrastructure, high student-teacher ratio and a local drug problem. A grandmother (an ex-teacher) who was looking after two toddlers throughout the meeting, shared her opinions with a crowd of over 300 residents – children of all ages were addicted to ‘baang’ (a local drug), and it was hurting their future.
Sometimes, children, young men and women pressured each other to try out various forms of baang. She felt it was like an epidemic that was leading to low attendance and high school dropout rates. The volunteers agreed as well. David, a university mathematics and physics student, enjoys differential calculus. Two of the remaining three volunteers, all young women from Ndindiruku, are university students as well, while the youngest of the group awaits her university entrance exams this year. They helped us connect with the village youth and serve as role models to all children in the village.
Our volunteers are champions of community participation, which is necessary to create sustainable support structures for children’s learning.
