2008 Annual Report for:
The Maywood Rotary Kenya Project
As Chair of the Maywood Rotary Kenya Project,
it is my pleasure to submit this report on all of our activities this past year. Five
years ago, this project’s annual report could be summed up in two paragraphs, one about providing food and one about providing
school uniforms. Below you will find how much our project has grown since then.
Double
the Donations:
You may not know that the Rotary Foundation has
tens of thousands of dollars available for Rotary service projects just like our Kenya Project, but there is one string attached. You must have the cooperation of a local Rotary club in Kenya. Dominic Jengo and I have been
trying to accomplish this for five years and only ran into road blocks. For example,
none of the six Rotary Clubs in Nairobi were willing to help without demanding our donations pay for their club expenses to
go down to Siana Springs Tent Camp. As Chair of the project, I will not allow
any donation to pay for administrative expenses.
But thanks to 08 trip volunteer Jerry Kallman
(past president of the Ridgewood Rotary Club) and his relentless internet research, we now have an official in-country Kenyan
Rotary Club in Narok (87 miles away from our school). This very small club is
very excited to work with us to get Rotary Foundation grants and they do not expect us to pay for them. In effect, every donor dollar towards specific school projects will be DOUBLED by the grant for that project. 08 Trip Volunteer, Kathy Palumbo, will be in charge of writing the grants we need. She will work with Diane Rhodes on this but please don’t tell Diane, she doesn’t know
that she volunteered for this yet.
Our
Angel Mercy moves into Rotary House:
For five years, Mercy Purity, the front desk
manager at Siana Springs tent camp, volunteered without any pay to be our representative to the school. She got construction estimates, beans and rice for the children each school day, and a hundred other details
that made our project successful. But as the project grew, she could not work
full time for Siana Springs and almost full time for us. It would be too much for any one person. It became necessary to hire
Mercy away from Siana Springs (at a yearly salary of $5,000.00 per year) and build a home/office for her on the school grounds. Thanks to the sponsor donations from the 08 trip volunteers, Mercy was able to move
into her new home and new job this past month. Her used furniture and solar electricity
will be delivered this week. Thanks to past donors, she has her own laptop and
internet connection (via cell phone). You might want to send her an email of congratulations to Mercy@maywoodrotarykenyaproject.org. But give her time to answer you; she has
to answer all my Kenya Project’s emails first!!!
Now I have become a boss and already Mercy is
causing me problems. She is working seven days a week and refuses to take off
one, much less two, days a week. And she won’t work less than ten hours a day. You would think we pay her by the hour.
Ridgewood
Rotary starts their own Kenya Project:
A great idea (thank you, Corey) spreads fast.
There are so many other local Maasai schools
that are as deserving of help as much as our Empopongi Primary School, but we don’t have the resources to help them. Or perhaps more honestly, I don’t have the time in each day to help another school. Ridgewood Rotary Club
has stepped up and created their own Kenya Project to assist another school called Kishermoruak
Primary school, only nine miles away from our school. Jerry and Lorraine Kallman came on our 08 volunteer trip to visit their newly adopted school and begin
on the road we went down five years ago.
I will be assisting them in their own Kenya Project
Volunteer trip which will occur the week after the Maywood Rotary Kenya volunteers work at the school next July. We wish them the best of luck in changing the lives of the students at their newly adopted school. May they do as well or even better than we have!
I foresee a day in the future, when I retire
from this job, that Kenya Project Chair Corey James Eustace-Williams has gotten a Rotary Club sponsor for each of the 29 schools
in the Maasai Mara!
Mercy
comes home to Maywood Again!
Yes, three years ago, Mercy saved up her money
and took out a loan to pay for her visit Maywood for two weeks
with James Kathurima, Siana Manager at the time. They gave wonderful talks to
over a dozen community groups and schools about the Maywood Rotary Kenya Project. And
then last year, Mercy came to bring Empopongi students Benson and Samuel for needed operations in Salt Lake City thanks to Coral Terry who covered those costs.
But Mercy has a personal friend who is paying for her to come visit her in her home in California. I insisted that on her way back
home she stop and visit her second home town, Maywood, for a few days because we all miss her.
07 Trip Volunteer Dorothy Fenniman graciously offered to host a reception
for Mercy and all of you are invited. RSVP required.
If you wish to see Mercy while she is here either
at Dorothy’s reception dinner, or hear her speak at Maywood Rotary, I’d be happy to tell you when both events will occur. But as all of you know about Kenya,
everything is relative and often changes. As usual, the American Embassy in Nairobi is being difficult in granting Mercy a Visa. She is supposed
to arrive on October 15th, but I am sure that date will change several times before we really know when she is
coming. When I know for sure, I will e-mail you about the dates of Dorothy’s
party, and when Mercy is speaking at Maywood Rotary.
Past
Trip Volunteers do all the Hard Work:
If only because I complain about it, most people
think I do all the hard work on the Kenya Project alone. In fact, this is not
true. Nine past trip volunteers are
part of a Volunteer Committee who work hard all year around to assist me with
all the work and difficult decisions on how the project should be run. We meet
in a different volunteer’s home for dinner and a meeting.
Let me tell you who they are. Past trip volunteers
Jim Croal (06) and Linda Tobin (07) meet with me on the first Thursday of each
month to record all the donation checks for deposit in our 5013c account. Then Dominic Jengo (06) makes those deposits. Linda Tobin is also in charge of our emergency
medical fund to help any school child or their family who needs urgent medical care.
And Jim Croal along with fellow 06 trip volunteer Dorothy Fenniman and 07
trip volunteer Arlene Rotolo are working hard mailing letters to everyone who has every made a donation to us. They are asking them for their e-mail address so we can update them on the progress that their donation
has made for our adopted school. We can’t and don’t want to send out expensive
fund raising letters, but email updates will cost us nothing.
Often running the Kenya Project requires me to
make ethical and difficult decisions, so past 07 and 08 trip volunteer Judge Lois Lipton has volunteered to help me do the
right thing! She is my Ethics Consultant. That’s
been invaluable help. Also when you have a committee, there is always one person
who has to do all the boring and tedious jobs like writing up minutes, writing long grant applications and scheduling meetings. That thankless job goes to 07 and 08 trip volunteer Kathy Palumbo.
A new member of our volunteer committee is past
Rotary President & 07 and 08 trip volunteer Diane Rhodes. She is in charge
of the library at the school and is working on ways to get adult books; so that even the faculty at the school will have books
to read.
Former trip volunteer Lyn Ofrane was in charge
of our very successful card sale fund raiser this past year and next year. As
a professional photographer, Lyn took the best of her great pictures, and put them on blank note cards for sale to raise over
$8,000.00 in card donations for the school.
You may not know that every single donor to the
Maywood Rotary Kenya Project for the past five years has received an individual thank you letter from Kenya Project Co-Chair,
JoAnn McKay. Another big and hard, but unrecognized job that helps us succeed
in our goal of helping the school.
Clean
Water at Empopongi:
In 2005, the first clean water source in the
entire area was built by donations to our school. In Africa,
they say that clean water can save more lives than three full time doctors. And
we have found this true at our school. But there have been problems we have to
face.
Back in 2005, we built the water system with
PVC pipes, which seemed like a good idea at the time. I was wrong about that. Elephants have walked across the water pipes causing them to break. It’s obvious that we need metal pipes to prevent this interruption in providing clean water to our students.
We also need pipes to deliver the water to the boys’ & girls’ dormitories, the kitchen and school garden. There is also
a problem with getting this water to the school and Rotary house. It seems we
need a pump to accomplish this. However, a gasoline powered pump would be too
expensive so we are getting an estimate for a solar powered or manual pump. We
are currently getting an estimate of the cost of all these challenges and will try to get a Rotary Foundation grant to correct
all of these problems. And with enough new matching donations, we will accomplish
this goal.
Scholarships
for Empopongi Graduates:
The Maywood Rotary Kenya Project has provided
scholarships to 14 graduates of our school. This entire effort is run by the
trip volunteer committee. With Mercy’s help, Jim Croal and another trip volunteer,
Janice Goldfarb, make sure that each scholarship donor receives a copy of every student’s report card every semester, and
a personally written thank you letter.
Also, committee member Linda
Tobin wrote the last application for students wishing to apply for a scholarship. And ‘08 Trip volunteer Ronald Smith has updated this application and worked hard on improving communication
with the school on issues concerning scholarships. He, trip volunteer Judge Lois
Lipton and Kathy Palumbo have not only interviewed the current 8th grade scholarship applicants while they were
in Kenya this past July, but also conducted
in depth person to person interviews with all of our past scholarship students.
Ron, Kathy, and Lois have been invaluable in
improving the entire way scholarships are granted so that donors can be sure that their money is well spent. All of us have
learned the vast cultural differences that affect schooling and are working to improve the scholarship program.
Food
for the School Children each School Day:
Every single school day for the last five years,
donors to the Maywood Rotary Kenya Project have provided a well balanced lunch of beans and rice to each of the 308 children
of Empopongi Primary School. You may have heard of the political unrest that started last December. This caused a large increase of the cost of food for our children.
We hope to increase our fundraising to provide the $425.00 per month cost of providing beans and rice to our children. We are renewing our fund raising efforts to cover this increase cost of food, let
us know if you can help.
Thanks to 07 trip volunteer Spencer Fenniman,
we were able to start a school garden to help grow some food for the children and help them become more independent. ’08 Trip
Volunteer Lorraine Kallman worked hard to help expand and improve the school garden.
The produce from this garden will supplement the children’s lunches each day.
Kenya Project Partners from Far Away Helping our School Children:
Several years ago, a British architect named
Wayne Collins visited our school. He wanted to help; so Mercy put him in touch
with us. He, and his friends in London,
raised enough funds to build the Nursery (baby class) and Kindergarten (top class) building.
Wayne also designed “Rotary House” which Mercy moved
into this month. He has always been concerned about water conservation and recycling. This November, Wayne
will visit the school for several reasons. Being concerned about using well water
from the spring for the garden, he will be designing a “grey water recycling system” with gutters on each building to collect
rain water into a tank for use in watering the garden. Wayne will also be consulting
with the school about next year’s big project, to build a building attached to the kitchen to be used, not only as a cafeteria
(so the children can eat their lunch inside when it rains), but also as a Community Meeting place for the different villages,
and as a Church on Sundays.
We hope to take Wayne’s plans and attempt to raise the needed funds for these improvements from our 09 Trip
Volunteers. Our trip volunteers on this trip will work on completing these construction
projects during our volunteer week at the school. This will be the biggest construction
project we have done for the school.
When speaking of Kenya Project Partners from
far away, we cannot forget to mention Coral Terry from Utah. It was through her hard work and donations that Empopongi
Primary School students Benson and Samuel were able to come to the USA for needed medical treatment. But Coral’s help doesn’t stop there; she is a high school scholarship sponsor (at a cost of $2,500.00 for
all four years) for six of our Empopongi Primary graduates.
Kenya
Project Partners From NJ Helping our School Children:
Every year, for several years, we have received
considerable help from the Hackensack Rotary Club. Through their donations, two
classrooms have been built for our school. Hackensack High School’s Interact Club (a Rotary Club for high school students) has raised the
funds to provide our children with the required school uniforms. Maywood Avenue School’s React Club (a Rotary Club for middle school children) has raised over $1,000.00
in donations, each year at a Student Faculty basketball fund raiser for several years, to help our school.
St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Maywood, All
Souls Presbyterian
Church in
New York, as well as many other churches have supported the Maywood Rotary Kenya Project for several years, all of them have helped make a big difference in the lives of the students, year after year.
Even
More Help for our School from a Summit NJ
School:
A few years ago, Karen Rezach, a principal of
a private school for 600 girls, called Kent Place
School, was a Trip Volunteer for the Kenya Project. Her school has an “International Day” each year; they invite two teachers and two students from a foreign
country to help their girls learn about different cultures. This year, the school
was kind enough to pay for Empopongi teacher Boniface Mwanzia, a seventh grade girl, Namunyak, and 8th grade girl,
Seenoi to visit Summit New Jersey
for the International Day classes. This was a very rare and wonderful opportunity
for all three of them. Karen Rezach has now asked the Maywood Rotary Kenya project
to plan a March 09 trip for 20 students, five parents, five teachers and their group leader, (me) so that all of us can volunteer
to work at the school for a week.
Hygiene,
Health and Medical Care:
I have been told by our medical volunteers that
many of the school children’s illnesses are caused by poor hygiene, specifically not washing their hands. 08 Trip Volunteers Richard and Maria Edmonds solved this problem by installing soap at the boy’s dorms,
girl’s dorms and the central part of the school itself. They also taught the children exactly how to wash their hands. Like last year’s health improvement, providing anti malaria nets for each child, I
fully expect to see a reduction of communicable diseases from this effort.
There is no medical or nursing care at the school. The nearest medical care is 87 miles away in Narok.
I was informed by my medical volunteers (Maureen Timony, Jay Buchholz, and Tim Eustace) that we must address this problem
now because too many children are sick at the school and illnesses spread at a rapid rate to so many other students. Dr. Jay Buchholz has donated thousands of dollars in needed medicines. The Trip Volunteer committee has approved hiring a Nurse to come to the school twice a month at a cost
of $100.00 per month. We hope to start this program in October and hold a fund
raiser soon to cover the $900.00 yearly cost of this small step to better health for our children.
And for the next year, teacher Kevin Moran at
Hackensack Middle School
has agreed to raise funds for the emergency medical fund. This much needed fund
covers emergency treatment for the teachers and students at our school. In the
past year, this fund has paid for medical treatment to two students who had eye injuries and one parent who was mauled by
an elephant. The students are doing well but the parent passed away from his
injuries.
Solar Improvements:
As you know there is no electricity at our school. So, funds have been donated to provide solar lighting in four places to improve the
education of our students. You may know that the 7th and 8th
grade students have to go to school from 6:00pm to 10:00pm each night to study for their national graduation examinations. Now solar lighting has been installed in these classrooms, but three 11 watt bulbs
are not enough. So wonderful donors from the Netherlands, Simon Watt and his family have made a donation to improve the solar
lighting. Solar lighting in both dormitories has been provided by a donation from Rotary District Governor Dominic Jengo. He has provided solar lanterns for both buildings.
After Wayne Collins from the UK built the new nursery and kindergarten, we were left with
the old dilapidated two (very small) room building. We made the needed repairs
and one room became the school’s library. With donations and the massive work
by trip volunteer Diane Rhodes, we now have a well stocked library in one of these rooms.
Our library will not only have electric lighting but to provide electricity for one computer donated by a Dutch organization
and a radio donated by Maywood Rotary.
The other room was being used by the Teachers
as a Staff Room. But they gave up the only space they have to work in because
they saw the need for a separate science classroom. Wayne Collins donated the
cost of a very expensive “Science Bench” that will now be powered by electricity provided by our new solar panels. We hope this will help the children do better in the science portion of their graduation examination.
Volunteer Trips to the School:
The July 08 volunteer trip to our school was
a big success due to the hard work and sponsor donations of the twenty volunteers. If
you exclude my family, over twenty thousand dollars was donated by the trip volunteer’s family, friends and their community
organizations. This money allowed for many important improvements to Empopongi Primary School.
First, they allowed us to build Rotary House
where our full time representative, Mercy, will be able to live in and work to help not only our school but other Rotary Club’s
sponsored schools. So, thanks to these trip volunteers, the Kenya Project will
be able to help the Maasai schools for many years into the future. But there
donations gave even more, seeds and tools for the garden, solar lighting, paint for the classrooms, school supplies, more
library books, underwear and clothes for each child, needed medicines, puppets, and yoyos, kazoos, for the children, solar
flashlights for each teacher, signs on each classroom or building, soap, and so much more.
Each 08 trip volunteer worked so hard and put their whole heart into our adopted school.
The July 09 trip is coming together very well
and the trip applicants come from varied backgrounds and have many talents that will help the school. We currently have many applications and are interviewing possible trip volunteers in the next two weeks. PLEASE note: applications will CLOSE on September 30th, so if you or someone
you know wants to go they must apply NOW. I am attaching an application with this report. After the committee interview applicants,
we will vote and announce who will go on the 09 volunteer trip on October 12th.
At this time, due to my family’s finances, I
am sorry to announce I am not sure we will be having a July 2010 trip. But I
am sure we will have a 2011 volunteer trip.
Financial Budget for 08 to 09:
The trip volunteer committee has approved and
submitted the following budget to Maywood Rotary Board of Directors for their vote and comments. You will find this budget attached to this email. Should you
have any comments or questions, please feel free to email me.
Our website: maywoodrotarykenyaproject.org
Because of all our other work, I must admit that
I have not devoted enough time to our website. However, we have had 3,939 visitors
to our website and many questions from people all over the world. I hope to do
better work on the website in the future.
In Conclusion:
I am confident that Maywood Rotary Club members,
Trip Volunteers from each year and all the donors can be proud of the tremendous good we are doing for 308 children on the
other side of the world. We are building for the future of helping where the
school can’t help themselves and striving to make the school more self supporting for where they can help themselves. We are also working hard to over come the vast cultural differences and improve our
communication with the Maasai.
I would never have been able to imagine that
Corey’s little acorn could grow into such a large oak tree. Well, in Kenya that would be a large Acacia tree. It’s an honor to be the director of such a project for Maywood Rotary.
Should you have any comments, suggestions or
willingness to help raise funds for a specific part of our project, please contact me at: Kevin@maywoodrotarykenyaproject.org. I also want to thank all the volunteers who work so hard so that my job isn’t
so hard. I promise NOT to send you such a long email until the next annual report.
Respectfully Submitted,
Kevin J. Williams,
LCSW
Chair
Maywood
Rotary Kenya Project
September 19, 2008
