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.