High School & Technical School

Secondary school—both high school and technical school—is not free in Kenya. The cost of school fees, supplies, and transportation is nearly four times the average annual Samburu family income, making it simply unaffordable for most families. In 2006 we started a sponsorship program to send our top performing students to high school or technical school.

In Kenya, you need a secondary education just to be a supermarket cashier or gas station attendant. To give our students the ability to get a good job, we want to offer them the opportunity for a more advanced education. Some students go to high school. If they do well there they can pursue further training in areas such as teaching, nursing, business studies, the Kenya Wildlife Service, and more. Other students go to technical school to become a qualified mechanic, plumber, electrician, or mason. With these skills they can either return to their community to fill a much-needed role, or they can get a well-paying job in a nearby town and send part of their earnings home to their families.

In 2006, more and more of our students became eligible and interested in pursuing a high school or technical school education, but their parents were completely unable to pay for it. So that year we initiated our Samburu Scholarship Program and offered scholarships to 7 students. Today, we now have 90 students in our program. In the next five years, we hope to provide scholarships for another 300 students.

Our scholarship program covers all student fees, school supplies, and transportation to and from school. We also provide scholarship students with extra tutoring to help them improve in their weaker subjects. Scholarship students have a mentor who looks after their academic performance and helps them create a balance between the traditional and modern world. Also during the school holidays they do community work digging pits to burn garbage in, bringing water and gravel to the school building sites, helping older people with their firewood etc.

We look for individual sponsors who are interested in helping one of our bright students realize their dreams. The sponsor pays $1,000 a year to send a student to one of the best secondary schools or technical schools in the country.