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Primary and Secondary Schools
As you can imagine the challenges facing schools in Kenya and Zambia are very different to those facing the schools of children in the UK. Therefore the work we do with them is very different.
In Britain we try to help children understand about global citizenship and the way in which their lives are inter-linked with those of people around the world. In addition we try and keep British school children active whilst they fundraise for projects in Africa.
In Africa we donate children footballs, netballs and volleyballs so that they can enjoy games and we try to help children in schools learn about the risks of disease and effective modes of prevention.
There are some 24,000 Government Schools in Kenya. Of these roughly 20,000 are Primary Schools, and 4,000 are Secondary. Primary School Education is free, and now so is tuition at Secondary Schools. But most parents have to struggle to find money for uniforms, books and in the case of most rural Secondary Schools - boarding.
Kenyan schools face many challenges, particularly when it comes to providing the pitches and equipment that youngsters in the UK take pretty much for granted when wanting to play sport. What they do have however is two very well organised Sports Associations, one for Secondary Schools and the other for Primary Schools. Both Associations are extremely well run by a group of dedicated school heads and teachers.
Every year, the two Associations stage separate National Ball Games Championships All 4,000 Secondary Schools participate in theirs which is run on a knock-out basis at at Zonal, District and Provincial levels. When it comes to organising National Finals, Kenya is conveniently divided into eight Provinces, thus the provincial champions in girls football, volleyball, and netball and boys football and volleyball, all meet up for the annual week long event.
There are too many schools to contemplate each participating in a National Primary Schools Championships, so individual players are selected to represent their Zones, and thereafter District teams.
As schoolchildren are the largest group to potentially benefit from Alive & Kicking's initiatives, both as ball users and from health education, a lot of time has been spent relationship building with the Ministry of Education, and in particular their Primary & Secondary School Sports Associations. Not only have Alive & Kicking donated over 5,000 balls to the two networks to date, for the past two years, our HIV/AIDS awareness team have been invited to attend and counsel at their National Championships.
The logistics of distributing balls to so many schools across the length and breadth of a country as large as Kenya is daunting, but Alive & Kicking has been greatly assisted in this area by the courier arm of a company called G4S, which is more used to delivering security services than balls.
The Ministry of Education's own web site www.education.go.ke will give you more information about the schools system in Kenya, and if you search for the Kenya Secondary Schools Sports Association using Google, you'll find the most recent reports on events as they are always featured in the media.
