A local community in Rongo Sub County in Kangeso community in Migori County has resorted to communal fundraiser kitty to support their children’s education and other basic needs.
Having been faced with fees challenges in the 2023 academic year, the community came up together with an initiative dubbed “education for all” to empower themselves in terms of raising school fees.
According to Morice Orwa, the chairperson of the community-led initiative, most of the parents have undergone tough challenges while raising the fee for their children, with no one to turn to.
In view of this, an idea of pooling the few resources in their hands dawn on them and they started raising few coins from willing community members to address the education challenges facing parents.
Orwa adds that in their community, at least each homestead has a learner in either university, high school or junior secondary school, making it hard to receive individual support.
“We decided to come together as a community following our deep financial problems in regards to our children’s education. In this community, at least every home has a learner in every cluster education and hence it is hard to get individual support,” Orwa said.
Orwa outlined that despite some learners being listed to benefit from National Government Constituency Development Funds (NG-CDF), not all benefit and they had to come up with an inclusive initiative that will see everyone benefit.
The Kangeso community have now managed to identify a total of 61 learners in different learning clusters who need urgent support.
Maurice Opiyo, a community neighbour who was invited to help in a funds drive towards the endeavor, says that he was impressed with the communal approach to addressing their children’s fees challenges, when he received the invitation.
Opiyo noted that it is disturbing to continually meet learners wasting times outside classrooms over fees challenges.
He adds that it is hurting to hear that some parents cannot even raise as little as Sh4,000 fees, hence it is important that parents pool resources together to aid every learner.
However, all that this community is doing is supplementing what the government is doing to keep learners in school.
“Community members are just supplementing what the government provides. It is saddening to meet learners in and out of school over a small amount of money that the parents can fundraise when they join hands together,” he said.
Lavenda Otieno, who is a learner at St. Paul University and also a beneficiary of the initiative said that the amount that they will get from the communal support will boost them when they go back to school.
She said that their needs might be small, but when parents are left alone to cater for them, they barely meet their minimum needs.
The community education kitty is able to supply every learner with books, pens, small shopping and also a cheque of Sh5,000 for fees.
By Polycarp Ochieng and George Agimba
