Gathonis Gift – Getting Planted
If I had to describe the year 2018 in one word, I would use the word, “planted”. It has been a year of settling in and we are finally owning what will become our greatest part of our foundation, the beginning. We want to memorize this year to remember our work, our mistakes and how we have finally settled on a growth path. We are excited to see how 2019 will challenge these roots. Our website is now ready, our online pages have also gone up and are ready for community engagement. We have also begun a registration process for our Netherlands branch which will be greatly instrumental to our work.
Our team is energized to move from the operational phase to stakeholder engagements as well as beneficiary activities. On personal fronts we continue to create a bigger timepiece for this passion project separate from our 8-5 jobs, We will be looking to loop in more help so as to ensure project sustainability.
On our pilot schools part, it was somewhat discouraging to see the just-released class 2018 results (KCPE). They say that numbers and/or grades, in this case, do not lie and so if students do not perform well then maybe our program will not go well, or maybe we are doing as much as we should. It is always easy to reward perfect score students, and our scholarships were initially meant to support students who score highest and cannot afford tuition. However, if we were to be fair in our assessment the inspiration we have brought to these schools will and must transcend the limitations of a single exam score. We want to empower all students under our programs and whether they end up in National Schools or not they will be better people. So we are at a space of rationalizing our scholar framework. We want to support all students who are within our chosen pilot schools.
So, this year even as we adapt our programs to what is most needed, especially by prioritizing our library project we also want to spend more time understanding our beneficiaries and ensuring that our help is specific to each student needs, we shall leave nobody behind.
Gathonis.