Brother Beausang Catholic Education Center
Brother Beausang Catholic Education Center is a private school catering for extremely needy children in the town of Embulbul, which is about 15 miles outside of downtown Nairobi in the central highlands of Kenya. The surrounding district is a mix of shanty town type slums and wide open spaces. In Kenya one is constantly struck by the contrasts and this is no exception. A dusty polluted highway runs through the town with small houses and shops crowded together on one side. Behind the fence on the other side of the road lie hundreds of acres of serene grasslands. Most residents live in primitive conditions with no electricity or running water, mostly in two roomed houses. Within a mile there are fenced off areas with large houses where a privileged few live in surroundings that looked like a suburb of Atlanta. The official website of the school is at http://www.bbcec.org/index.htm
The school serves about 700 students all the way from kindergarten to the end of high school. Since the school is private it attempts to provide a service that is above that offered in the regular public schools where class sizes of up to 100 students prevent any kind of effective learning. Beausang limits class size to 40 and pays teachers a little more than the average for a public school. A healthy lunch meal is also provided each day for every student, an essential service for many who may have no other meal in the day. In order to maintain these services, as well as basic textbooks and supplies a fee of approximately $300 (200 Euro) per year is required from each student. The government provides about $12 per student per year, which is not sufficient to cover a fraction of the costs. The vast majority cannot afford to pay the fees and donations from sponsors provide the necessary support. In this manner almost all of the students are actually educated through the generosity of donors and these students would not have the opportunity without the donors’ support.
A home visit to one of the students revealed a typical scenario. The student’s parents had died and the child was staying with a grandmother. She lived about 6 km from the school and had quite a long morning walk before the 7am class beginning. In fact she rose at 3am and turned on the paraffin lamp and studied for about 2 hours before setting off in the darkness over dangerous roads. Her diligence is paying off as she has won numerous academic awards at the school. This home visit took place before lunch and it was noticeable that the student was in greater haste to return to school in good time for the school lunch.
The following
comments followed a visit by Jerry in 2007. Laura and Carrie joined Jerry on
a follow-up visit in 2010 and their observations are
here. Some
progress has been made and a new
school building is in operation. The major challenges remain in the area of
curriculum and teacher competency. A fundraising effort is underway to provide a
new teacher of Mathematics which will enable smaller class sizes and more
focused instruction.
I concluded my 2007 visit to Beausang with the following recommendations for the academic program. These issues remain and can be noted again.
More photos are available here. Volunteer opportunities are described here. If you would like to assist please click Donate