Mzizima School working together with Mida Ecocamp
Mzizima Primary/Secondary School hosts 711 children of Mida Village, the direct area that Mida Ecocamp is responsible for. Hence it is our greatest concern to help the school as much as possible to give our children a great foundation for life and a future in which they will contribute to the development of their country.
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- The name ‘Mzizima’ was chosen by the village and is translated from Swahili ‘Fountain’.
- The school was founded in the year 2000, after children had to travel 12 km to the nearest primary school in Mazangoni – an impossible task for most of them.
- There are 3 nursery years and 8 years Primary in Kenya – Mzizima School accommodates all 11 years.
- Mida Secondary School opened beginning of 2010. Children attend Secondary School for 4 years and are required to pay school fees.
Below some examples of our work and help at the local school (not in chronological order):
We would like to thank Hilfswerk Mida Ecocampand our lovely friends and guests who have supported us in getting where we are so far.
If you would like to directly help the children of Mida through the charity or would like to sponsor a student in Secondary School, please contact Felicity. Thank you very much!
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The camp, the charity and friends of Mida Ecocamp are assiting the community in Mida with the main focus on the local school.
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The school got in touch with Mida Ecocamp in October 2017. Kenya's Ministry of Education was strengthening the laws about children having a birth
certificate in order to receive a 'Unique Personal Identifyer' number - this number is necessary to attend school.
It turned out 174 children in Mzizima had no birth certificate - their parents either did not have the money or the knowledge how to go ahead. It took a lot of
devotion from local volunteers and Henk, a guest at the camp to fill in all the forms and take them to the district council.
A celebration at school: free food for 450 children and
the teachers have to dish up.
While school in year 1-8 is free, children need to
purchase school uniforms in order to attend. The £5 per
uniform per child is a heavy burden on most families and
absences are a daily occurence directly related to this.
350 children received a free school uniform from Mida
Ecocamp for a fresh start in January 2018.
In 2010, the school
approached us with the
desperate need for a
classroom for nursery
children. We built a
classroom and furnished it. It
is now used by 100 children.
Hard to believe - most kids here have not seen a toy before, so here the nursery receives toys, pens and paper.
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Our maize meal sale is one of the most popular activities that doesn't just
assist the school, it helps the whole village. We have been running this for
a few years now and each one is running for a few months at a time. It
started when the big rain seasons failed and no harvest was growing on
the fields in Mida. People were hungry.
We ordered truck loads of maize meal from the next town at wholesale
price and sold the packets in the camp below the original price.
Families, who are looking after orphans, have received 12 packets for free,
like Harusi and Safari (right), who are together with their other three
siblings looked after by an aunt.
The main nursery school is at Mzizima, but two nurseries opened in areas too far from the school for children to walk. They used old church buildings, but
children were sitting on the floor and did not have any educational materials - not even a pen. We had some more furniture made by local carpenters and
equipped both nurseries with books, wall charts toys etc
There is always a
shortage of
toilets at the
school so we built
3 for the nursery,
2 for primary and
another six for
the secondary
school over the
last years.
The Malindi - Mombasa road runs past Mida . While the largest part of the population lives in Mida Village, the school is on the other side of the road. We
calculated, that there are about 2500 crossings by children on a normal weekday alone. No wonder that there had been 89 fatalities in 12 years. We
campaigned tirelessly to get permission to build and unfortunately it took another life of 3-year old Elvis until we got heard by the ministry.
After seeing 8
children sharing
one book, we took
off to Malindi book
shopping with the
teachers and some
students.
The very first project by Mida Ecocamp at the school - buying huge cooking pots for the
school, who at times receives food donations for children, but had no means to cook them.
Henning and Meidine held a dinner party to
collect donations. Then, instead of going on
a regular holiday, they went to Mida and
invested their collections in building works at
the camp and giving a helping hand at the
school. Wonderful!
Handing over collections of pencils to the
school. Our Motto 'Give children sweets,
you turn them into beggars, give pens and
paper to the school, you educate them'.
These students had
just received
sponsorships for
Secondary School. The
better the marks, the
more they received.
The best had been
sponsored for the
whole year.
Right: Safari and
Masha happy
receiving the news
These three have a lot to smile about - they just
graduated in their 2 year study in hotel
management supplied by the camp. If you have
vivited the camp before, you will recognise
Benson Katana, who is the manager.
We were struggling to find a
plumber in Mida, so we made our
own. Here Katore starting his
plumbing course at the Polytechnic
in a nearby town.
Christmas present to the children in Mida. It was
decided to give the three best students of year 1 to 8 a
new school uniform each. Happy, smiley children.
Chengo, a teacher at school shows children some of
the toys that have been collected by guests at
Ecocamp. As you might see by their faces, there was a
striff warning to handle these toys with care:)