Education

Education

In some regions of Marsabit in northern Kenya, girls are more likely to experience early marriage and female genital mutilation than school.
Rendille people who live in Marsabit are traditionally nomadic (photography by Simon Tustin)

"The girls still under FGM, married off at an early age like eight years. When you go to a place called Karare, the other day we cried tears because there was a girl between the age of eight and nine years old being married off to a man who she had never met in her life."

Elema Molu Dida, Mothers’ Union coordinator for the Diocese of Marsabit

Sometimes children miss out on school because their tribes are nomadic, i.e. they move about a lot with their cattle, looking for water. So children are not in one place long enough to go to school regularly.

Wings Academy

Wings Academy was set up by the Anglican Church of Kenya to give children, particularly girls in this region, access to stable education. The school has a Christian ethos, with the firm belief that each child is created in the image of God at the centre of its vision. The school motto is ‘Give me wings, I fly’ as staff seek to equip children with the tools they need to succeed and excel.

AID supports Wings Academy by paying the salaries of two qualified teachers at the school (around 100 GBP per month). We do this so that these trained teachers stay at Wings Academy rather than looking for a job in another, more developed part of Kenya. We hope to provide salaries for all 10 teachers at the school as support for this project grows. The more trained teachers there are in the school, the better equipped these children will be to go onto secondary school and escape poverty and customs like early marriage.

You can help

Please pray for girls and all children in this area of Marsabit. Pray for hearts and lives to be changed through this Christian school.

We would love to be able to pay the salaries of more teachers at the school. If you would like to support this work, please visit our donate page.

The most useful way to give is to set up a monthly standing order. But we gladly welcome gifts of £5 or £5,000+. Everything makes a difference!

I would like to help children go to school in Marsabit – donate here