Our Latest News
SPRING 2024
The Karen Street Children’s Trust and the Seed Sowing Network have been working together for very many years with SSN having funded and built the smart “head start” nursery school premises (Mahali pa Watoto) which generously provide us with office space and a base.
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For Lena it must seem as though she has been with us all her life. She first came to Mahali as a tiny tot to join this wonderful charity nursery school. Coming from a single-parent family living in a one- room shack she was then admitted to a free Primary School where she performed excellently coming top of her class with 70% overall. She came back to us to apply for secondary school sponsorship and finding her a worthy candidate we took her on. In her first term there she scored 10 “A” grades well justifying her sponsorship.
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Lena is unfailingly helpful and has always shown great leadership skills. She was soon elected School Vice President and then President.
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Her ambition has always been to work in the health sector, and having achieved an excellent final grade she did her community service in a Retirement Home where she was given a glowing letter of recommendation.
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In 2019 Lena was admitted to the Kijabe College of Health Sciences. Here she was again generously sponsored by the Seed Sowing Network.
She is now a fully qualified nurse and has been taken onto the staff at Kijabe, where she is current working in the male medical department.
CHRISTMAS 2023
On 23rd November we held our annual Prize Giving and Speech Day but what a very special day it was! For the very first time we invited our past students and alumni to come along to join us.
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The Karen Street Children’s Trust was founded in 1995 so some of them are now in their 40s and some have not been back since. Around twenty attended, past students who have created a wide variety of careers: a doctor, several accountants, a quantity surveyor, microbiologist, lawyer, nurse and several businessmen.
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We concluded a busy day with a concert given by the young musicians of Ghetto Classics, an organisation which inspires young people from the slum areas to take up a musical instrument and join the orchestra. They were able to interact with our group and have offered to teach our students in the future.
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It was a great way to end the year!
SPRING 2023
January is the start of the new academic year in Kenya and is the time when we have a flood of hopeful applicants coming to the gates of our centre. The selection process is an agonising affair - who do we take on and give a hopeful future to and who do we have to leave behind. Some decisions are easy - those who are bright and whose home situations are desperate and who have absolutely no chance - but others are more difficult. Maybe they are in dire need but not quite so bright. Maybe if we delve deeper some distant relative might be able to help.
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Sharon was an easy choice. A bright sparky girl living with a single mother in evidently difficult circumstances, her life would be turned around by the chance of further education.
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​Following extensive interviews and home visits we selected five girls and five boys, and are happy that we have chosen worthy candidates. We will follow the progress of those left behind to make sure that we have not missed any who should certainly have joined us.
