This is Jacob- a Maasai warrior- he led a walking tour of the bush. When he found out why we were in Kenya he enthusiastically told us that World Vision had been in his community for 10 years- and that he had been sponsored and had his uniform and secondary school fees supplied by World Vision. He is now going on to get a higher education degree and said it was encouraging to see Stefanie and I gainfully employed (since the unemployement rate in Kenya for young adults is relatively high).

Compare the girls' boarding school with this traditional classroom...imagine how rainproof this would be during the wet season and you can see what a difference having a proper classroom can make to a good education.

The girls' boarding room...the walls will be whitewashed and other finishing touches will occur to make the dorm more cosy. There are also plans for partitions between the bunks to give more privacy.

Top photo is the current "showers", the bottom photo is of the new "showers" under construction.

The science lab.

In this area of Kenya on 12% of girls go to high school- partly because when money is tight boys' tuition is paid before girls', and partly because many girls are married young.
On average if a girl doesn't go to high school she will have her first child between 14-18 years old, if she goes to high school that first child will be born when she is 20-25 years old.
So important to keep girls in school!
You've probably heard the saying "to educate a boy is to educate one man, to educate a girl is to educate an entire community".
(The poem the girls composed for us is partially written up on the blackboard.)

A sink in the chemistry lab---but no water yet.
This brought home to me how important it is to have clean water- you need it to meet the most basic of needs like drinking and cooking, but also for those needs that help the community take itself out of poverty- like attaining higher education degrees. For someone who is trying to graduate high school and get into university it would be helpful in chemistry class to have clean water to even do the experiments.

Girls from an all-girls secondary school (high school) greeted us with a orginal poem relating how much has happened at their school because of World Vision and others who are investing in them. The school started in 1988 but was shut down after just one year because of finances- in 2003 World Vision stepped in as a partner.
In 2003 the school consisted of one room and the girls boarded in the principle's own home with the principle renting a room elsewhere to make room for the girls.
Now in 2007 the school has 3 classrooms (including the science lab), a teacher's workroom, a boarding room that sleeps 103 girls, and a kitchen. Currently a shower/lavatory is being built (presently the girls are using an outside shower area). The hope for this coming year is to build a dining hall- as they eat outside right now.

The community dug the trench that this water pipe is in- which is piping the water from a new borehole/well to a water kiosk and school.

The top picture is of the capped borehole (some 300ft. deep), the middle picture is of the solar panel that runs the pump (what do you do in an area with electricity? harvest the sun), and the bottm picture is of the local water committee (who have learned the skills to maintain the borehole, pump, & solar panel, and teach the community about the importance of using clean water).

This is a shallow well (with hand pump) that was funded by a church in PA- it is capped on top by cement- that protects the water from contamination, as does the bramble fence to keep the animals back. The portion on the left is a "pipe" that leads to a trough outside the fence for the livestock.

This is an example of what people is this area traditionally do during the dry season to access water. This hole is dug by hand into the dry river bed until the water level is reached- and a fence of brambles has been formed around the hole to protect it from animals.
Many of the holes I saw did not have the added protection of a fence (top photo).

Livestock drinking from a mostly dry riverbed (and in turn contaminate what little water remains).

You wouldn't know it from this picture, but this is a river during the rainy season. But when it's the dry season- well, where do you get water from? (and consider this- when there is water it is used for household use, the animals, washing clothes, etc----so even during the rainy season there is need for clean, safe water)

This is the neighborhood in which the sponsored girl lives.
You can see how the roads aren't paved- which causes massive quantities of dust to be in the air. We heard the results of this side of poverty in the girl's voice which was raspy with a chest cold.

This is a typical home in Soweto- with no running water or plumbing and electricity is available only if creatively spliced from nearby lines.
We are here to visit a sponsored child- to share with her some gifts sent with us by her sponsor in the US and to see how she is doing.