EDUCATION FOR KENYA
My name is Jesús and I have had the great LUCK of having been born on the side of the world where having access to an equal and dignified education, having a plate of food and being able to have shoes and clothes is taken for granted.
I´m a person who -like YOU- from time to time collaborates with charities and makes donations to humanitarian causes. I won´t tell you anything that you don´t already know, but I would like you to listen to our proposal.
After too much time talking with charities, looking for an adequate project that really made me feel that 100% of my money and time were spent on the purpose, I took the decision of creating my own project during a trip to Kenya.
What we describe here is not just my project but yours, it is ours. I promise that together we will change things and we will find a reason to think that YOU and YOUR actions count and can help make a better world.
With that purpose, we need my friends collaboration (and the friends of those friends), because it is only by transmitting to you our passion for the project that all this may make sense.
I encourage you to watch the documentary that you have below to learn more about us.
Will YOU help us?
My name is Roberta Di Nicolantonio I live in Milan and I couldn’t imagine that a holiday trip to Kenya would turn into the birth of such an impactful initiative. I had the luck of discovering that part of the world together with a courageous person, willing to change things, Jesús.
When we saw with our own eyes the problems that kids living in Watamu were suffering, he told me, “Come on, let’s talk to these families and with the school director and offer them help. I’m sure there is something we can do”. Everything started out from this sentence, and we worked in a very structured and professional manner -avoiding loose ends and improvisation that may subtract seriousness from the project. We got in touch with banks, we met families one by one, we looked for representatives in the field...
“Important” is a word we use too frequently, and who knows how many times those things or moments really are important in our lives. To me, “important” is having had the chance to observe a way of life so different from mine, of being welcomed like a princess in rustled-up huts like homes, of seeing pictures of those kids in Watamu going to school when the Project came alive, and of knowing that those kids will have a better future thanks to education. I hope that each of YOU feel really “important” and special too for allowing this initiative to become a reality.
My name is Álvaro Portellano and although I have an engineering background, my personal curiosity has always driven me beyond developing a satisfactory professional career.
Travelling and adventure expeditions have typically filled my leisure time, but I honestly think that helping other people is one of the most gratifying experiences that someone could ever face, and that is the reason why, when the opportunity of helping Jesús and 24 Friends came, I didn´t hesitate for a second.
Now I feel that a tiny spot in Kenya called Watamu is a part of me and, undoubtedly, that working for the kids in that region to receive something so valuable like a quality education is worth dedication, effort, and passion. And, to tell you the truth, it is me that feels an immense gratitude of being awarded with the sincere warmth of the people in that remote part of the world.
One of life’s most important decisions is figuring out what to be when you grow up. And quite possibly, it is a question I have never known the answer to as answering means assuming we will be old at some moment in time. In my case, I still wonder what I will be when I grow up.
In any scenario that goes through my mind, whatever it is, at least I would have saved somebody’s life. It is a legacy that everyone who was born lucky enough to have a happy present should undertake.
This is 24 Friends. Through education and companionship of a child, you will save at least one life. What began as an initiative between friends to save the life of 24 children has become a project that helps more than 100 families.
Education is everything and though it we can save lives. Join 24 Friends and leave your legacy.
During a trip to Kenya in the summer of 2013 we visited the Watamu area (a lovely location where you can find sea stars, exotic fish, palm trees, turquoise water and fine white sand) and what shocked us most is the significant number of kids wandering the beach begging for money and playing with homemade footballs made from spare fabric pieces. They were dressed in clothes that tourists gave away at the end of their holidays. Very few of them had access to education and their future seemed to be very uncertain.
Locals typically work in the fishing industry or as tourist guides. Although, to tell the truth, the lack of money to invest in the tourist infrastructure force local people to arrange improvised tours across the natural beauty around.We became friends with one of the guys offering tours in the beach. His name is Abubakar, aka Amedeo. We had a good time having long conversations which allowed us to understand the crude reality for locals there. We understood that boys and girls around were really struggling to have a future and make a living. So we asked him a pretty simple question: “How can we really help these kids?” The answer was also straight and simple: “Education”.
And he was certainly right. Not having a good education equals to not having a prosper future. We recall an inspiring sentence: “A life is dignified when a person has the tools to change his future”. We saw it clearly and understood that it was in our hands to help and add our two cents worth!. Education may allow these kids to develop personally and to contribute to the welfare of their community. Only through education the destiny of a collective can be redirected and its successful development can be granted.
We concluded that by knowing these families and kids personally and by getting into their daily context we may have the right inspiration to help them and assuring that our contribution would target a very specific purpose. So we asked Amedeo to take us to his village along several days and to introduce us to some families that may need support for their son/daughter education. And so he did. Visiting one family after another a domino effect took place, since we understood we had the chance to help them and their kids.
When we visited their homes and experienced the reality they live in, we decided not to stop. Thus we wrote a list of every boy or girl that we were able to help. And we ended up with a list of 24 kids whose personal and family context impacted us the most.
And so the idea of launching the 24 Friends Project became a reality. Now it was our turn to convince 24 people back in our hometowns to help the 24 kids in the list, and consequently help creating a better life for their 24 families. At last we had conceived a clear, transparent and impacting project. Simple: no intermediaries and tangible results.
According to the 2011 World Education Compendium published by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, in Africa, two out of three children are excluded from education or receive it intermittently or poorly.
Education is a fundamental human right, and it is inherent to all boys and girls. It is crucial to our development as individuals and society, and helps to lay the foundation for a fruitful and productive future. By ensuring that boys and girls have access to quality education, based on fundamental rights and gender equality, we are creating an expansive wave of opportunities that will affect future generations.
Education helps improve lives and eradicate the vicious cycle of poverty and disease, paving the way for sustainable development. Through quality basic education, boys and girls acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to adopt healthy lifestyles, protect themselves from HIV / AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, and take an active role in decision-making. social, economic and political nature as they move from adolescence to adulthood.
Adults who have received training are more informed about best practices for parenting and are concerned about their children's education. Each of these children has a potential that they may never be able to develop or have access to an education that lays the foundations for development, transformation, innovation, opportunity and equality.
To achieve long-lasting improvement in disadvantaged children’s quality of life, through facilitating and education that may provide them with hope, culture and values.
The Project began by funding:
Isabelle Lambert (of Belgian nationality and settled in Kenya for more than 30 years) and her husband Jelani (Kenyan) run the school with passion, dignity, and ethics, with highly motivated teachers and offering a solidity and transparency that we consider fundamental in all humanitarian project
In Kenya the academic year occupies a calendar year with a month-long vacation after each term:
January-March: 1st quarter (April: Holidays)
May-July: 2nd quarter (August: Holidays)
September-November: 3rd quarter (December: Holidays)
Primary school at the college starts from 2 years to approximately 14 years. There are 12 academic courses:
Day Care 1 y 2
Pre-Primary 1 y 2
Primary Standard Grade 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 y 8
After level 8, the child has a high-quality educational level (the teaching hours are intense and the intensity, seriousness and commitment are very high).
Access to secondary school is preceded by a selective national exam which gives students an entrance mark. Based on this score, children can choose between higher quality secondary schools throughout the country and also qualify for government aid if the results are outstanding.
Secondary school is made up of 4 courses, and depending on performance, it gives access to the University, for which the most outstanding records also obtain government aid.
With the aim of continuing education, among our students, we help those who obtain an outstanding result in the secondary entrance exam, in consensus with their sponsors, and who manage to be selected by quality national schools.
You just have to send us an email to jesuscubero@24friends.org and we will tell you all the details.
1) Sponsor a child (Primary School)
For those people who commit to helping the child year after year, as the year progresses.
As for the issue of costs, depending on the course in which the children participate, the prices vary each year, depending on the books and clothes (the children grow up). With the intention of simplifying and making an equitable distribution among all the participants in the project, we have considered it appropriate to calculate the costs annually and divide them among all. That said, the approximate cost is 300 Euros per year.
The money is entered directly into the school, without intermediaries (which avoids the problem of corruption, something very common unfortunately in Africa).
2) Make timely contributions to the 24 Friends Scholarship program (High School and University)
For those people / companies that want to collaborate in a timely manner. The money will go to the scholarship program for those children who will go on to secondary education at a school in Kenya, where they can sleep and eat.
VERY IMPORTANT! Your money goes directly to the children. The costs of travel to visit the Project, website, telephone, and other Marketing actions aimed at disseminating the Project are assumed by the co-founders with our own funds.
In order to reduce the different costs for the international transfer to Kenya that each person in the Project should face on a monthly basis, we have created an account at Banco Santander, which offers us very favorable conditions as it has humanitarian purposes.
The Banco Santander account is:
24 FRIENDS
ES20 0049 1221 91 2110276306
BIC: BSCHESMMXXX
