Our COVID Response
HATUA STUDY GROUP
On June 17th, before Kenya's government announced schools will remain closed through the rest of the year, we launched small study groups with our 44 Form 4 students (high school seniors) to help them prepare for their end of high school national exams. We also engaged 14 of our Gap year students to serve as tutors for these groups.
When we learned that schools would not reopen in September we expanded our small group tutoring program to serve all of our high school students. To do so we recruited 67 of our university students to serve as tutors for 55 small study groups of four students in the same Form and who live near each other.
We provided each group with facemasks, hand sanitizers, and guidelines for social distancing during sessions. We also purchased curriculum and revision books for each group (these books will bolster our library collections when students return to school) and are providing our tutors with a monthly stipend of $40 plus a weekly transport allowance. All study groups are hosted by Hatua scholarship student parents, either in their own homes or in available space near their homes.
The study group sessions take place every day from Monday to Friday for three hours every day and are scheduled to run through Mid-December. As from the beginning of September, we started incorporating soft skills mentoring into the program and dedicated Fridays to mentoring all our high school students on soft skills development.
Kenya's Ministry of Education had officially postponed the reopening of schools until January 2021 and announced that all primary and secondary students would repeat the school year that began in January
However, at the beginning of October 2020, the Ministry issued a directive to have all students in class 4, 8, and form four report back to school on Monday, 12th October 2020. They issued a revised calendar for these examination candidates. While no definitely announcement has been made we believe the remaining classes will resume school in January 2021.
In the meantime, we continue engaging all our remaining high school students in the study groups as well as our college students as tutors for this program.
DIRECT NUTRITIONAL SUPPORT
Read our blog post about Derick Omondi, one of the Hatua Network students whose family benefitted from Hatua Network nutritional support
We know that while our students are in boarding school they are assured of three balanced meals every day. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Kenya, and the government responded by locking down movement and economic activity, we turned our focus to ensuring each of our families has at least one meal per day. By making phone calls to all families every two weeks we have monitored our families' economic situation and provided support through direct cash transfers using mobile money.
At its peak, before the lockdown was lifted, we provided support to over 370 families (78% of families enrolled in our scholarship program). Since the lockdown was lifted we have seen a steady number of our families resume economic activity, leaving 83 families in need of our support as of our last round of check-in calls. Since April 1st we have disbursed slightly under $40,000 in direct nutritional support. All this has been possible through the generous donations of our institutional and individual donors.
We are very grateful to all our institutional and individual donors for their support that has ensured that all of our families have been able to survive this difficult period with a least one meal every day.
MOBILE LIBRARIES & READ-ALOUD
In September 2020, we also started a mobile library program with two areas of focus- providing books to our secondary students and their siblings; and engaging our secondary school students to read aloud to children in small groups.
Through this program we distribute books every two weeks to our secondary students while they are meeting for their study groups. Included in each student’s package of books are story books for read-aloud.
Each student is then charged with the volunteer work of inviting children who live near their homes to join in small group read-aloud sessions. This helps us to ensure that the resources of our Libraries continue to reach the children of our community and that these children continue to develop their interest in books even while out of school. Our goal by end of year is to reach over 6,000 children through our read-aloud program.
