Kenia has compulsory education since 2013.
This means all parents are obligated to send their children to school!
Regardless not all children are able to go to school.
This is true for orphans, children with very poor parents, families with many children and especially children living in the slums!
Since 2013 there are schools that are nationally subsidized but even so there are fees for each term! (more information under “School systems in Kenia”)
On 08.01.2014 Milly opened a school in the Khalwenge slum called Havilah Hope Academy. At that time all kids from our Havilah Family visited this school. It was essentially a Primary School.
In addition to the Havilah Kids 140 children from the slums were able to visit this school. Some could pay a small fee but most of them couldn’t afford to pay anything.
A lot has changed since then. After building our own house Milly started teaching the Havilah kids directly in the orphanage. However the authorities insisted on doing this only in rooms specifically made available for this purpose. Therefore in 2015 a temporary school building consisting of 8 rooms was erected. This made it possible to teach the entire Primary School (1st – 8th grade) on our own property. It is still possible to children from the surrounding villages to visit the Havilah Hope School! The fees from those “foreign” children helps Havilah Hope e.V. to pay the teachers’ salaries.
After the Havilah kids finish Primary School successfully they can go to Secondary School when their degree allows it. To do so they go to boarding schools or day schools and live outside the orphanage during terms.
Each year the number of Havilah Hope kids who’d like to go to Secondary Schools is rising. The children want to get the highest degree possible and are very ambitious! This makes it harder to raise the fees for Secondary Schools. (Fundraising campaign „Buy a semester”)
With the years 2019/2020 there were once again big changes concerning the school!
Once again authorities tried to make things harder but their attempt at blackmail is the reason an entirely new school building for Havilah Hope could come to live.
Thanks to the untiring support of our mayor Dr. Christoph Hammer and the businesses and self-employed in and around Dinkelsbuehl our new school came into being in Saiwa, next to the orphanage.
On 13.01.2020 we were able to open the doors to the new Havilah Hope school.