We found Hamisi Juma in the thick of tutoring Gideon, Winnie, Alfred, Grace, Angela, and Samuel on how to calculate the surface area of solids, a form 2 Math topic. The session was so engaging and I remember having a brief bittersweet déjà vu.
When Hamisi, a Marine Business Management 2nd year student at Moi University was approached by Hatua to tutor 3 groups in Likoni in Math and Physics, he was determined to make it work. We were so impressed at how confident he was tutoring Math that day and he, later on, explained that the public speaking and communication skills he learned from Hatua’s high school mentoring helped him a lot.
The youth we serve come from low-income families, who earn an average monthly income of $60. The majority of these families cannot afford electricity and do not own smartphones, let alone computer devices.
When the Kenyan government ordered all learning institutions closed to stop the spread of the pandemic, we at first supported our college students with data bundles to complete their online assignments. However, we increasingly realized that our high school students risked being left behind.
“I think our school has been sending us assignments via WhatsApp, but I can’t access them as no one in my family owns a smartphone”
We piloted a project with our current 44 Form 4 students (high school seniors) to help them prepare for their KCSE and engaged 14 of our Gap year students to serve as tutors for these groups. In August, we expanded our small group tutoring program to serve all of our high school students.
We have recruited 67 of our university students to serve as tutors for 55 small study groups of four students in the same Form and who live near each other.
We provided each group with facemasks, hand sanitizers, and guidelines for social distancing during sessions. We also purchased extra curriculum and revision books for each group (these books will bolster our library collections when students return to school) and are providing our tutors with a monthly stipend of $40 plus a weekly transport allowance.
Our high school students are seeing the benefits of attending our small study groups as it gives structure to their day and helps them dedicate time to studying. We have also incorporated soft skills mentoring into the program and dedicated Fridays to mentoring all our high school students on soft skills development.