Agenda for the Children at DGS

Balanced Education

Class 4 with Mr Moses

Primary education is essential for the well-being of all children, as well as for the future of Kenya. Children are the world’s greatest resource and responsibility, yet their access to balanced education is a major challenge.

Balanced education goes hand in hand with access. While free primary education is offered by the Kenyan government, the provision of classrooms with desks and chairs is not an automatic guarantee that this goal is being met.

UNICEF’s “State of the World’s Children”(2008) reports that only about 65% of children in West and Central African countries are attending primary schools as compared to an 85% school attendance rate for children in Northern Africa. Only one-third of children in Chad and Equatorial Guinea reach the fifth grade – while in Somalia the percentage drops to 3%, according to UNICEF.

Destiny Garden School aims to ensure that opportunities for a quality education will grow and extend to the poorest and most vulnerable communities and children in Kenya.

For instance, in Kenya, Mombasa, Destiny Garden School has worked with the government to ensure the adoption and implementation of a policy to make a basic and quality education available to all children. Destiny Garden School also works with teachers, community leaders, parents and pupils to promote the education of marginalized and vulnerable children. In fact our uniqueness is to see that these children’s’ talents and skills are well nurtured enabling them to reach their innate potentiality.

Adequate Feeding Programme

Children queueing for water

Food security – the availability of food and people’s access to it is a luxury rather than a right in many communities in Kenya. Destiny Garden Primary School provides a cooked lunch each day and for many of the children it is their only proper meal of the day. It is not uncommon for families to go without food for a day.

The School would like to help all the children in this area but the situation does increase the burden on its resources. We have initiated a farming project within the school, a 122 metres by 22 metres plot for growing onions, kale, tomatoes and planting trees to help us be self-sufficient and self-reliant. Destiny Garden School is implementing community-based food security programmes for children, whilst also seeking to ensure that food-insecure households do not withdraw these children from school in order to generate more income.

Feeding the children

HIV & Aids

Destiny Garden School works closely with other organizations to raise awareness within communities and amongst individuals regarding HIV and AIDS and the need to protect children from discrimination caused by the disease. We allow international volunteers on HIV/AIDS awareness’ to co-work with our local partners and staff in sensitizing communities through coalitions and networks so that orphans and vulnerable children have access to basic services.

Environmental Skills

Gardening DGS has introduced environmental education for the children in the school in partnership with Kids for Saving Earth-USA.

To be a community of leaders learning to enhance the relationship between the people and their environment.

On this we aim:

To help children develop into adults who understand and care about environmental stewardship.
To nurture the children’s sense of wonder, imagination and creativity.
To provide children with a sense of beauty, calm, and refuge in a sometimes frightening world.
To expand their intellectual development: it’s been proven to improve test scores, grade-point averages, and problem solving skills.
To enhance physical development of these children.
To help children understand the interrelationship of all life forms.

Jacob with the children

Technology

Children with a laptop computer We create opportunities with partners to enhance our children’s education through the use of technology at the school. Finding partners who can support our children at our centre with the computers for learning. We have 300 children unable to access computers.

Our Director, Jacob, has a desktop computer at home, a gift from volunteers, that he uses with internet connection to communicate with would be volunteers. The School Manager, Victor, has a laptop which was donated to him from a supporter in the UK, and occasionally he brings this into the school to show the older children.

Before computers can be introduced to the school, the school requires electricity. For this a generator, or preferably solar panels, will be required.

Child with book

Destiny Garden School needs more funds to:

provide better quality food at lunchtimes with meat and fruit
provide the children with a nutritious breakfast
equip the new dining hall with tables and benches
provide more stationery and bring the ratio of text books to 1:1
buy more educational equipment such as computers, kindles, as well as toys for the nursery classes
provide the children with new uniforms each year
improve the classrooms e.g. repaint them, tile the floors, install fans and lighting, provide shutters for the windows
provide further sports equipment and build a suitable pitch for Basketball, Volleyball, Netball and Tennis
establish an irrigation system to water the garden which has now been established in the school grounds. The garden grows both fruit and vegetables to help feed the children ensuring they have fresh food

In the longer term Destiny Garden School would like to:

provide better health care for the children e.g. employ a nurse to visit the school once a year to give all the children a full health check, as well as testing eyesight
build a new toilet block with better facilities
purchase a minibus to take the children on educational trips
purchase land for a larger farming project so the school can become more self sufficient
educate children up to the age of 19. Only about 20% if the children in the area go to high school and we would like to construct a Destiny Garden High School
provide a homely and comfortable place for the orphans, near the school premises

Classes outside