Reaching the Summit

Three years ago, I climbed to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. But yesterday, I reached a far more rewarding summit. After a nine week climb creating a summit - the Global Student Summit program for Kijana - I reached the top. The picture to the right is what it looked like.

It was a room at Es'saba Secondary School, containing thirty students - ten each from Es'saba, Ebusiloli, and Mwituha Secondary Schools - who have been selected to participate in the program's pilot campaign, "Water Sustainability: Finding Solutions to Fresh Water Scarcity," starting in September and running through May 2011.

The meeting in the picture above was their Student Orientation, where they familiarized themselves with each other and received training to prepare them for the journey they are about to begin. While my nine-week climb to develop the program has just ended, their nine-month climb as participants in the program has just begun. Along with fifteen students from my high school, The Benjamin School in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, these students will become experts on the global water crisis and work together to promote some serious solutions within their communities, nations, and world. But their summit will reach a much higher peak than mine; they are taking their ideas to the top of the world - to two Presidents, a Prime Minister, two Members of Parliament, two Senators, one Congressman, and to the Secretary General of the United Nations. Together, these 45 students on opposite sides of the world will shine a very bright light on one of the most pressing - and most ignored - problems facing our global village in the 21st century.

During the orientation, each of the students received their own Participant Guide for the Water Sustainability campaign - beautifully printed in full color and spiral-bound - containing readings, reflection questions, and quotations to provoke their imaginations and inspire them to action.


One of those quotations I put in the guide is a favorite of mine from Robert F. Kennedy:

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
- Robert F. Kennedy

Kijana President and Founder (and my high school teacher) Jim Cummings was also present at the orientation and he made sure to point that quotation out to the students. He asked one of the girls to stand up and read it out loud, and as I listened to her read those words for the first time - with her unique Kenyan pronunciations and occasional reading struggles filling the silent room - I got goosebumps. To hear a young person encounter the words that I have cherished as a sort of Bible verse for public servants was like hearing it again for the first time myself. And somewhere, I know that RFK - the ultimate advocate and believer in the power of young people and the idea of "youth" - was smiling. 

Jim and I helped them understand what RFK meant, explaining to them that they are each sending forth their own tiny ripples of hope into the universe. Ripples of hope that would inspire others and one day, after crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, create a powerful tidal wave of hope. Amusingly, Jim even went so far as to point out to the participants that I am a student at the Clinton School of Public Service - a place named after a U.S. President who was born in a place called Hope. I picked up on it and explained that I was inspired by the ripple of hope that President Clinton has sent forth in the world, and now I was passing it on to them, who I hope will then pass it on to others. At this point, the students were beginning to understand the ripple concept, so Jim drove it home by having the students say out loud: "I am a ripple of hope!," louder and louder until they couldn't help but burst out laughing. It was an incredible moment that I will never forget.

And although I used President Clinton in my ripple of hope example, the truth is that Jim is the greatest source of inspiration responsible for any ripples of hope that I have sent forth into the universe. I have known him for ten years now, and I can still remember the first time I met him at Cross Country practice a few days before I started ninth grade. I might not have been able to articulate it, but I knew from that first moment and from the way that he treated me as a young person that there was something different about him that other teachers and adults didn't possess. He has a true gift for teaching and a truly large heart for empowering youth and inspiring them to let their own light shine outward. I was reminded of that again yesterday as I watched him speak to the students at the Orientation, and seeing the smiles that spread across each of their faces. In particular, I have to share the picture above. Jim is pointing to his hat, and while apologizing for wearing it indoors, he explained that he chose to wear it to the Orientation for a good reason. The hat has a simple, but powerfully true message: "There is no Planet B." His point was clear; it's the responsibility of you young people to protect Planet A, our most beautiful, wonderful home, Earth. It's been ten years, and I'm still learning from Jim. And still catching his ripples. 

I was extremely pleased with how the Orientation went, and with how my entire project has gone, for that matter. After the session, I had the students go outside for some pictures. Each of them took an individual picture holding their name (see Everlyn's photo to the right), and then as a group. It was incredibly rewarding for me to see the camaraderie that was displayed as the students waited to take their pictures. Students from different schools who hadn't met each other until just two hours before were laughing and smiling and enjoying each others' presence. I'm hoping that a similar level of respect and friendship can be built between the Kenyan and American students when the videoconferences start in September. Although I won't be able to be there myself over the next nine months, I'll be following the students' progress with great interest and pride as they work on their own summit climb together. 

Life is Good Pt. 2

More pictures of the good life from the past four weeks in Kenya.

Boga poses with Flat Stanley

Photo shoot with the kids...

Riding my bike at sunset through Es'saba Village's narrow walkways. 

The wet season ended at the end of June, which means that there has been considerably less rain in July. Every night now, there is a line of people waiting to fill up their jerry cans with water from the stream.

These kids are sent out every night before dinner to go fetch some water for their family.

Then they haul the heavy water up the hill. If they're lucky, their family lives close to the spring, otherwise, some have to walk for upwards of a mile. 

 

I fetched some water one night myself, carrying it on my head like these girls. Luckily, Welliminah's house isn't terribly far from the stream. It was a workout though. I had a sore neck afterward. All the villagers laughed at the sight of me carrying water.

 

A beautiful view at sunset. See that large hill in the distance? We climbed that with Ben. Apparently the local story is that the rain Gods live there (although I don't think anybody around here actually still prays or believes in such Gods).

 Boats on Lake Victoria's shore in Kisumu. I was there to arrange a field trip for the students in the program I'm developing. They'll go there in October to learn about the lake, take a tour on these boats, and do community service. 

 Welliminah told Patrick one night that she wants us to return to the airport in America looking very "healthy" (read: fat), to show our parents how well we were taken care of. She had this hilarious quote: "When you come off the plane looking fat, your parents will be so proud." So Patrick stuffed his pillow under his shirt after dinner one night to show them how fat he's become. Laughter ensued.

Students at Ebusiloli taking down and folding up the flag at the end of the school day. 

Vincent receives a bath from Moraa. 

A beautiful road on a walk with Ben. 

Over the weekend, Patrick and I met our new classmate from Class 6, Shamim Okolloh. Shamim just so happens to be from Kenya - with family roots in the Bunyore area, where we are doing our projects. Although she's lived in Atlanta for several years now, she came back to her high school in Kaimosi to organize the school's very first alumni day. She invited us as well. The school is an all-girls boarding school and is nearly one hundred years old (the oldest alum present graduated in 1936!). Below is a picture of her addressing the over 1200 in attendance. First impressions of Shamim: impressive, confident, awesome. 

She also spun a fast one on us and had us address the humongous crowd of students, faculty, and alumni as well, without any preparation. Afterwards, the students bombarded us with questions and picture requests. See below. My favorite question from one of the students: "Do you hate being governed by a black man, Barack Obama?" Apparently she didn't notice I was wearing his t-shirt. My reply: "No, I love it!"

Lastly, I'll leave you with Richie, the subject of the greatest photo I have ever taken (it's now my desktop background):

Project update

Tomorrow will mark the four-week point of my project in Kenya. It's incredible how fast time has moved. But I've made good use of it so far - over the past four weeks, I've been hard at work developing the Global Student Summit program for Kijana. The concept of the program is to engage Kenyan and American youth in cross-cultural interaction and solutions-based dialogue on the world's most pressing issues. Each year, from September-May (following the US academic calendar), participants will collaborate and deliberate a new and different topic that has global relevance.

Kijana's director, Jim Cummings, who is a committed environmentalist, suggested that the focus of the first "campaign" (which is the term I have developed for it in my planning materials) be on global fresh water scarcity, with the goal of promoting solutions for sustainable water management. It is certainly a relevant topic here in Kenya, and whether students in Florida realize it or not, it's important there too.

The past four weeks has involved a lot of learning and research for me. I have become an amateur expert on water issues - or at least as knowledgeable as each of the secondary students who participate in the program should be when they're done with it. And being here in a rural village in Kenya has also given me a first-hand education of the water challenges that are faced in developing regions throughout the world (which Patrick has excellently documented in one of his blog posts).

Aside from the learning and research, my task over the past month has been to figure out how to make this a meaningful program that will broaden students' horizons and understanding of the world, and also make them feel empowered as global citizens and change-makers. Jim's vision for the program was to have a series of videoconferences which would culminate with the students writing and submitting policy proposals for sustainable water management to their national and international leaders - the President and members of Congress in the United States, Kenya's President and relevant Members of Parliament, and the United Nations Environmental Program.

That alone would be a great program, but I knew I could make it even more meaningful. Since I am a student at the Clinton School - a school of Public Service, rather than a school of Public Policy or Public Administration - I know that change cannot be affected through top-down policy decisions alone. The role of change-agent or advocate also calls for creating civic engagement within his or her communities. It means educating and changing hearts, minds, and behaviors. It means getting down on your hands and knees sometimes and getting dirty. It means being on the ground level, communicating with people eye-to-eye rather than staring at a computer screen all day on the 15th floor of a skyscraper. These are the lessons I took away from my first year at the Clinton School, and I am now ready to put them into action.

So in addition to the policy proposals, the students will also get a little dirty themselves. In addition to learning and talking about water, they will experience it, and serve it. In October, I am having the students visit their local bodies of water - Lake Victoria in Kenya and Lake Okeechobee in Florida - in what I am calling a "Local Immersion Mission." They will learn about their local water - its history, the life it supports, the challenges it faces - and then they will contribute to the sustained health of the water, even if it is as simple as picking up trash along the banks. The idea is that there is great importance in actually making that physical connection with water in their region, to help them understand what they are fighting and advocating for.

This idea was inspired by my reading of David Orr's book Earth in Mind, which I think is the most brilliant thing I have ever read. He says, "Water should be a part of every school curriculum....Water as part of our mythology, history, politics, culture, and society, should be woven throughout curriculum, K through PhD...I propose that (water) restoration be made part of the educational agenda. Every public school, college, and university is within easy reach of streams, rivers, and lakes that are in need of restoration. The act of restoration is an opportunity to move education beyond the classroom and laboratory to the outdoors, from theory to application, and from indifference to healing. My proposal is for institutions to adopt streams or entire watersheds and make their full health an educational objective as important as say, capital funds campaigns to build new administration buildings or athletic facilities." While this program won't fully realize Orr's vision, it is a start.

The other major component I have decided to add to the program is to have the students host an education and advocacy event (or series of events) at their schools to mark World Water Day, which is held every year on March 22 (which ironically enough, is also my birthday - perfect considering my last name!). It fits perfectly within the program calendar and will be a great way for the students to put the knowledge they gain to action, by giving them the opportunity to practice their advocacy, leadership, and communication skills within their school communities. It also broadens the impact of the program - I believe their presentations on World Water Day will make a legitimate difference at their schools, and will inspire their peers and even their teachers to make personal commitments to reducing their water consumption. The program will also request that students hold a fundraising drive as part of their World Water Day efforts for Kijana. The idea is for Kijana to take the money raised and pay to have water systems such as gutters and tanks installed at schools in Kenya. And yes, I'm even going to request that the Kenyan students raise money too. Despite the impoverished area they live in, I believe that with enough creativity, they can raise money from their community. This realization will help empower them to believe in their ability to contribute to change. Lastly, I'm going to see if my high school, The Benjamin School will match money raised by their students.

All in all, I want the program to be a holistic learning experience for the students. I've embedded my draft of the Participant Guide (below) that each student will receive and follow along with throughout the program. It's chock full of articles and information about the global water crisis, which will help prepare them for the videoconference discussions and in forming solutions to promote in their policy proposals. But I didn't want the Participant Guide to be an information dump. I wanted to engage them in a broad discussion of the supreme importance and significance of water. David Orr says, "What is the meaning of water? One might as well ask 'What does it mean to be human?' The answer may be found in our relation to water, the mother of human life. When the waters again run clear and their life is restored we might see ourselves reflected whole." Inspired by this, I have aimed to include a broad spectrum of selections in the Participant Guide, readings that will acknowledge the fullness of the students' human spirits and their wide range of interests and abilities. It includes poetry about water, stories about our physical and spiritual connection to water, scientific overviews of our global water resources, and the larger social impact that water scarcity has on the quality of our lives and our development as societies. As I learned in my Education Policy seminar with Don Ernst this past semester (which is where I was exposed to Orr's Earth in Mind), we can be doing a lot better at reaching each of our students on a holistic, human level. This project is my experiment, my effort, to try to do that.


The picture to the right is of students at Ebusiloli Secondary who will participate in the program starting this September.









Below is my draft copy of the Participant Guide. Feel free to browse through it to get a better idea of my project and this program. I would warmly welcome any thoughts or suggestions on the draft. More updates on my project to come. 

 DRAFT - Water Sustainability: Finding Solutions to Fresh Water Scarcity - Global Student Summit - Participa...

Welcome to Small America

The first time Jim Cummings told me that there were students in Kenya that have to walk four hours round-trip to attend school everyday, I lacked the life experience required to fully understand what he meant. I couldn't understand what would possess any kid my age to want to wake up every morning at 5am, head out the door by 6am, and walk for two hours to go to school, the twelve-year prison sentence slowly robbing me and my friends of our youth. "So why don't they build a school closer to where they live?", I asked incredulously. "Because they don't have enough money," Mr. Cummings, my high school social studies teacher replied tolerantly.

I was a scrawny fourteen year old freshman at The Benjamin School, an expensive private school located in one of the wealthiest areas of the United States - northern Palm Beach County, Florida. Instead of a four hour round-trip walk, I was dropped off and picked up from school everyday by my mom or dad in their leather-seated, air-conditioned luxury cars.

Ten years later, I stand in the middle of Mwituha Secondary School (right), the newest secondary school in western Kenya's Emuhaya Division. Opened in 2006, it will graduate its second Form IV (12th grade) class this November, and has quickly established itself as one of the area's top schools. Growing from zero to two hundred students in five years, it currently ranks third out of sixteen in Emuhaya Division based on students' scores on Kenya's national standardized test, the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE). But despite all its accomplishments, the school is best known throughout the area by its interesting nickname: "Small America".

The school's opening and growth has been an ongoing project of Kijana Educational Empowerment Initiative, my partner organization this summer. The organization was founded and is directed by Mr. Cummings, the former high school social studies teacher who I now simply refer to as Jim. In the late 1980s, when Jim was roughly my age, he worked as a World Teach volunteer, teaching English for two years at a nearby secondary school called Ebusiloli, another school that Kijana now assists. As he got to learn more about his students, he found out that many of them were walking long distances to and from school everyday - some as long as four hours round-trip. Their routinely strong attendance in class despite the arduous daily journey along hilly dirt paths and dilapidated tarmac roads made a lasting impression on Jim. Even if those students overcrowded his classrooms well past capacity, he appreciated the value that Kenyan youth placed on education.

A lot of those students would have gone to Mwituha Secondary if it existed. For a long time, the Secondary school sat next to its companion Primary school, educating students from its nearby villages, miles away from Ebusiloli. But in the mid-1980s, the Secondary school shut down, struggling with poor performance and lack of funds. For twenty years, the plot of land laid vacant, with brush growing up around it, no one caring enough to clear it. The effect the school's absence had on the community lays largely untold, but could not have been good. Jim's students that endured the long four hour journey to and from Ebusiloli everyday were actually the privileged few whose families both understood the importance of education and had the luxury to forfeit some of the valuable time their child would normally be spending doing important daily chores around the home.

When Jim launched Kijana in 2002, reopening Mwituha was high on his list of priorities. Once enough funding was in place, Kijana began by revitalizing the only structure still standing on the school's campus, two small classrooms that now hold the school's Form I and II students. Kijana continued by building two additional classrooms for Form III and IV students, a science laboratory (left), and an administration block for the school's faculty and staff. Meanwhile, Jim worked with Emuhaya's District Education Office to keep them in the loop with the school's progress, and when they saw how well the school was taking off, they contributed two classrooms of their own through a government agency, the Constituent Development Fund (CDF).

Receiving a tour from Susan Jactone Okola, a former student of Jim's from Ebusiloli who now serves as Kijana's Program Officer, I am amazed by the beauty of the school. A staple of every school Kijana has assisted is its impeccable lush landscaping, with grass on the ground, trees providing students with shade on their breaks, and a wide variety of plant life surrounding the classrooms and walkways. As students walk around campus, murals and motivational quotes also greet them and inspire them to strive for their best (right).

Kijana's latest addition to the school is underway - a large library (below) with a giant open reading room, a computer lab, additional classroom, and most interestingly, a large opening from the reading room looking out upon the open campus, where a performance stage and round stadium-style seating will be constructed as an outdoor amphitheater for use by the school and community. The library/theater combination has a unique design that I haven't seen anywhere else in western Kenya. The name of the architect is Jeremiah Awori, a modern day Renaissance Man, who closely oversees the construction of his plans from the classroom across campus where he serves as one of the school's teachers.

Jim has told me that he doesn't just want to build schools in Kenya, he wants to build great schools. Why shouldn't students in Kenya have the same access to opportunities that students in America have? Students at Mwituha will soon have a beautiful, well-equipped school in which they can experiment with science, explore the world through a comprehensive library and computer lab, and express themselves publicly through theater, art, and music. The projects Patrick and I have brought to the area are perfectly timed. Now that Mwituha has the essentials - classrooms with a roof to protect students from the wet season's daily rains, a full staff of teachers and administrators - our projects will go a long way toward making the school truly great. Patrick is helping the school identify a strategy to prepare students for the KCSE science exam, an area that local students have struggled with. My project will engage students in four cross-cultural videoconferences with students from my high school in America, where from my own experience as a naive fourteen year old freshman there, I believe students will benefit just as much from the interaction as the Kenyan students.

Small America is flourishing. The nickname, which is reported to me with great pride by Mwituha's principal and teachers, is amusingly inspiring (I have told them that while we have many Little Italy's and Chinatowns in America, we do not yet have a Small Kenya). Small America, like it's larger counterpart across the Atlantic, is a land of opportunity. For the students, who have been given a great school. For the teachers and faculty, who now have meaningful and reliable employment. For the community, whose skills have been put to work to revive and construct this beautiful campus. And for teachers at Ebusiloli, who have seen their classroom sizes return to a more manageable level.

I find Mwituha's story to be incredibly inspiring. I consider myself an idealist, but as I think is common for anyone, it is sometimes easy to feel a sense of futility. ("There's so much need in the world....how could I possibly be making a difference?") Admittedly, I was recently feeling this way about Kijana. But when I took the tour of Mwituha and met all the students and faculty there, each one so enthusiastic and full of optimism, I quickly realized my foolishness for doubting the impact Kijana was making. This is an organization that in just eight years has made a considerable difference in the lives of hundreds of children, and has promoted healthy economic growth for communities here, hiring skilled workers to construct buildings, install electricity, dig wells, plant trees, and paint wall murals and maps. Experiencing Mwituha's success has reminded me of Margaret Mead's advice, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." The truth is, the only way Kijana can fail is if I (and others) lose our faith in it. The kids and teachers at Small America certainly haven't lost their faith. So I'm asking you, too, to put your faith in Kijana. I'm asking you to learn more about Kijana and to consider making a donation, by visiting their website at www.kijana.org. Thank you for joining me, and thank you to everyone who has put their faith in me. 

Students at Ebusiloli Primary School pose with Flat Stanley next to Kijana's logo

UPDATE: To see videos from Mwituha, including an interview with the Deputy Principal about the development of the school, and a tour of the library under construction with teacher/architect Jeremiah Awori, please go to http://kijana.org/video.html.