Team Kenya adapted when Covid shut schools, thanks to support from BFSS

Team Kenya benefit from Covid emergency support

Kenya

When schools closed, BFSS provided Team Kenya with a grant for additional resources to enable children to continue learning

Team Kenya were one year into their project to improve literacy in remote areas of Kenya when the pandemic hit. In March 2020 schools were closed and remained shut until January 2021.

BFSS provided Team Kenya with a grant for additional resources to enable their librarians and peer mentors to run local tuition and reading clubs, setting up a number of safe spaces where children could meet librarians and borrow books.

Librarians also expanded the reading clubs to include girls in their final year of primary school. To help them improve their chances of success in graduating when exams resumed, they printed and marked practice exam test papers for them.

As a result, an astonishing 98.7% of the girls supported by the programme returned to schools when they reopened in January. Teachers report that these children had not lost ground and assessments for the final year pupils showed that despite nationwide school closures, the students maintained and in some cases even improved their results.

Due to the diligence of the project staff, 560 girls and 140 boys across 14 schools continued to benefit from literacy support and free access to books whilst the schools were closed.