Mission Maasai

Due to ongoing security concerns in Kenya, Mission Maasai is now on hold until further notice.

However, if you still want to raise funds for the project, we would be very happy for you to do so. You can still use our online store to deposit donations that will then be sent out to our Mission Maasai partners. Here are two links to help you do that.

• Namuncha Schools website. This website is run by Prof Arthur Hibble, Emeritus Prof of our Postgraduate Medical Institute (PMI). It was Arthur who first introduced us to the Mission Maasai project. Donations made through his website make their way to our account where we then send the donations off to our Mission Maasai partners.
• Direct through our ARU online store.

Thanks for your interest in Mission Maasai, and if you want to talk about it, please contact us.

Background

The Namuncha community is largely Maasai, situated in the area of the Longonot satellite station and the Kedong Valley on the Rift Valley escarpment, about 100km northwest of Nairobi. The community is characterised by roaming Maasai flocks and a growing community of those who till the land and grow crops. Above all it is a poor community that is dragging itself up by its bootstraps and desperately needs financial and practical support to accelerate its development.

The community has resources in its cattle, goats and a quarry. It has used the quarry to build a primary school and a community resource centre for adult learning. The primary school is now so successful that they have a roll of 600 pupils. Their success has also brought with it difficulties, for example, the wear and tear on their plant is considerable. They have minimum class sizes of 40, with a maximum of 90, with one teacher per class. There are mostly 3 or 4 pupils sitting at one desk. That means they are short of desks, and those they have get broken. The concrete floors of the walkways and classrooms are badly broken and need re-surfacing. The classroom doors are mostly broken, as are the toilet doors. Strong winds (rather than student abuse) accounts for the damage to the doors.

Watch The Namuncha Community Secondary School Project video to find out more about the community.

What we'll be doing

Meeting with the primary school Principal and the Board at the recent exploratory visit, they (the Principal and Board) asked if our work in the first visit could concentrate on the primary school, particularly the concrete floors, refurbishing and making new desks, putting doors on classrooms and toilets, possibly building new composting toilets, and helping with teaching the students.

They also have an ICT hut powered by solar energy, although their laptop computers are getting old and the batteries no longer hold their charge very well. If we could bring some expertise to developing their solar resources and help with upgrading computer facilities it would be greatly appreciated.

Who'll be going

The inaugural team would be the staff team of Rev Tony Cant, Pauline Start, and Professor Hibble (who would also be our medic as he is a retired GP). We would recruit several other staff with particular skills in building maintenance and primary teaching. A student team of ten would be sufficient to get enough work done to make the trip viable over a two-week period.

What we hope to achieve

Through Mission Maasai we want to:

• do something practical with people overseas who have less than us
• to leave the school in a better state than we we arrived
• develop sustainable international relationships as well as genuine research opportunities
• build on the success of Missions Croatia and Ukraine
• give our students the opportunity to participate in life-changing experience which clearly links with our Employability Strategy, and helps to achieve our Corporate Plan
• enhance our University's profile as being a stimulating and adventurous place to study