Kamokos primary school

At the moment (October 2024), 208 children from the community of Kamokos are receiving free primary education at our school – this includes 70 children in nursery school and 138 pupils in grade 1 to 6. The school has eight primary school teachers, who are all paid by the government of Kenya. There are also three teachers at the nursery school, and two support staff. 

We set a goal for 2022 and 2023: to build an ICT room and a fully equipped administration block. And thanks to our sponsors, that is what we were able to do. The school is very happy with the administration block, which has a large room for all teachers, plus 3 smaller rooms for the head teacher, deputy, and secretary. We equipped the rooms with tables and chairs and supplied electricity. Our director Hugo van den Broek was able to attend the official opening in March 2024, together with a group of 20 physiotherapists from all over the world (who happened to be in Iten). Many of them contributed to Kibet4Kids.

In 2023 we had already opened the ICT room – basically a regular class room, but with secured windows to make sure all electronic devices inside are safe. Although the Kenyan government promised to deliver laptops to all schools, this never happened. And unfortunately we have not yet been able to equip the ICT room ourselves. This remains an important goal for the future. At the moment, the ICT room is being used as a regular classroom by grade 6.

In 2022 the county government (Elgeyo Marakwet County) promised to build a double classroom for the ECD – that is the nursery school. Unfortunately, this also never happened. So currently, Kamokos has six classrooms and one ICT room, which were all built by Kibet4Kids and are being used by the nursery school and year 1-6. The county government has now promised to build the nursery classes in January 2025 ….it remains to be seen if this will happen.

Apart from classrooms and teachers, our pupils need textbooks. The Kenyan government gives every school a certain number of books, but this is far from enough. Imagine having two to three textbooks for a class of twenty children. This makes studying very hard and leads to poor results. Kibet4Kids, aiming for a minimum of one book (per subject) per two pupils, has been able to buy extra textbooks in 2022, 2023 and 2024, for a total of 200,000 Kes (1400 euro). We will continue to spend some of our funds on textbooks every year, to ensure there can be good quality of education. 

We were also lucky to receive several large donations of story books for children (in English) from a retired Dutch teacher. Kamokos and Kolol primary school were extremely happy to receive the books and promised to allow the children to read as much as they want.

Finally, Kibet4Kids has connected electricity to the school in 2024. The administration block now has lights and sockets that work. Our next goal is to install electricity at the ICT room.