The school
Bombolulu School of Promise is a school for children from poor families, who do not have money to send their children to school. Although education in Kenya is free, parents are still obliged to purchase the obligatory school uniform. Also, logistics around the distribution of books by the government leave a lot to be desired and sometimes up to 5 children have to work with 1 book, because of this.
Kenya has a different school system from Europe. The children attend Kindergarten and go through levels KG 1, 2 and 3. Subsequently they will go to standard 1 through 8. The school year in Kenya runs from January until December. The holidays are in April, August and December. Except for in December, extra lessons are provided during these months. The school was founded by British sponsors who were sympathetic towards the fate of the poor children and street children of the region. The day-to-day management is in the hands of principal Pamela. Besides Pamela there are 4 more teachers and together they teach 11 groups of pupils. There is no more money to hire extra teachers. Therefore, the support from volunteers would be more than welcome! The school is situated in a small building. Some classrooms are no larger than 10 m2. Some groups are joined together in 1 classroom, with the left side of the room being used for one group and the right side for the other group. The school hours are from 08.00 hours to 16.00 hours. Lunch is distributed in school, so the children and volunteers can stay behind during the break.
Activities of volunteers
Currently, a maximum of 2 volunteers can work at the Bombolulu School of Promise at the same time. Volunteers work as assistants of the teachers in class, they do not teach independently just yet, but as this school has less teachers than groups of pupils, volunteers might be assigned to guide the pupils by themselves. This will be possible after the teacher has given instructions to the group. The language used during class is English. There is a syllabus which specifies what course material the children in a particular class need to master by the end of the school year. Volunteers provide considerable additional value in one-on-one coaching of the children with their school work. Volunteers may also submit new activities, like learning new games, singing songs, tinkering or sports activities. After school there is time to prepare the lessons for the following day.
Conditions for volunteers
In order to become eligible for working in Bombolulu School of Promise you meet the following criteria:
- You are at least 18 years of age
- The minimal stay is 4 weeks
- You like children
- You do not smoke, at least never in the company of the people in the project
- This is a Christian project. You do not need to be a Christian, but you are expected to respect the religion and participate with all activities.
- You are capable of working with primitive means and consider it a challenge to achieve maximum results from this.
- You do not have a problem adapting to local customs and work together with the local population.
Housing
If you work as a volunteer in Bombolulu School of Promise, you can choose if you want to stay at a host family or at the Doingoood house.
Costs: Why pay for volunteer work?
Your whole stay as a volunteer is organized by us. The projects that we work together with are fully dependent on gifts and therefore it is impossible for them to pay for the travel and accommodation expenses of volunteers.
The projects where our volunteers work are carefully selected by us and they are prepared to work with volunteers from a different culture. We have also taken great care in selecting a number of accommodations for our volunteers to stay at. Much attention is put into providing you safety and comfort. Our local coordinator Peter Ochiel organizes everything that is required on site to make your stay as pleasant as possible. You get a personal reception at the airport and you will receive a welcoming pack with all sorts of useful information about the country and your stay. You also receive information about the place where you will work and live. Peter will always be at hand to answer questions or in the unlikely event that problems occur.
