Updates from a Difficult Year

Habari yako! How are you, friends? It’s been a while since we last updated our friends on how we’re doing at Jitegemee. Just like everyone else, we have been struggling to deal with the impact of the Covid-19 crisis. But we are still here, and we are grateful for all the support our friends have shown us!

Kenya has been fairly hard hit by Covid-19, with over 25,000 cases of Covid-19, and over 400 deaths to date. Schools across the country have been closed since March, and will likely remain closed until January 2021. Although restrictions on movement have eased somewhat, for several months there was an overnight curfew with strict restrictions on movement within and between cities, and also a ban on international travel.

At Jitegemee, we closed our offices mid-March and our team started working from home. Our staff ensured our secondary school and university students returned home safely from their schools across the country. We have encouraged our students and their families to stay home, and our hard-working team continues to follow-up on our children to make sure they are staying safe and healthy.

What are we doing to support our students and families?

• Expanded our food and nutrition program – since March, we have been doing a monthly food distribution to our families, so that our parents could stay home and not engage in informal work that puts their families at risk.
• Subscribed to Safaricom’s “MShule” mobile-phone learning program for all our primary school students. This ensures our students can continue revising their work while schools are closed.
• Ordered masks from some of our Vocational Program graduates who trained and work as tailors. These tailors are making masksfor our students and families, to encourage safety and health.
• The Ministry of Education donated books and revision materials for all our secondary school students to continue revising during the months of absence from school. Our staff are working with our students to ensure they are able to study from home.

While this has been a challenging time for all of us, our number one goal has been to ensure our students, families and staff are safe, healthy and have enough to eat. If you would like to support our emergency efforts for the remainder of 2020, please click here to make a donation.