Turning Point Trust Blog
The tyranny of numbers
Kenya is electing her fourth president today. We are electing a new government and numbers will count, whoever gets 50+1 takes the cake. In the corporate world, numbers are everything, everyone wants to know how much money is in the bank at year end, even in NGOs people want to know how many you have [...]
Continue Reading >The cut mark
By Gladys Machocho This blog is 250 words, the equivalent number of marks a pupil in Turning Point must acquire to proceed to Secondary School. The KCPE results were released and received with mixed emotions, some did exceptionally well whereas some were below average. As a social worker at Turning Point this is the time [...]
Continue Reading >Time to Boogie
At 10am this morning the creativity classroom was sway-swaying and boogie-oogie-oogie-ing along to the ‘Animal Boogie’. If you’d walked past, you would’ve been too. It’s great fun! Although it comes with a warning: the song will get stuck in your head – especially as the kids continue to repetitively sing the one line of the [...]
Continue Reading >Congratulations!
Yesterday was a tense day for some of our kids as they waited to receive their KCPE results (end of primary school exams). It’s amazing how some numbers or letters on a small piece of paper can have the power to shape the future of someone. In Kenya, KCPE results are marked out of 500. [...]
Continue Reading >New Buildings in Kianda
When our centre in Kianda closed for Christmas, building work for our new Transition classroom and microfinance office began. We had bought the land a couple of months prior to the building work beginning and were waiting for the compound to be clear of children before starting the work. In the space of a week [...]
Continue Reading >Christmas Holiday Clubs
Last week the Mashimoni compound was busy hosting the first week of holiday clubs for our kids in standard 1-4 (first 4 years of primary school). Around 50 kids turned up each day for a morning of teaching, drama, small groups, games and arts and crafts followed by lunch and an afternoon watching movies. Godwill [...]
Continue Reading >Leah’s story
This is Leah. She’s 12 years old and part of our Transition class in Mashimoni. Leah lives with her father and younger sister. Her mother passed away a couple of years ago. Her father moved to Nairobi with his two daughters after his wife passed away in the hope of finding a better job, enabling [...]
Continue Reading >Mercy’s Story
On the whole, I used to enjoy school. I had good friends and apart from a big aversion to maths and physics, I got on well in class. But I also use to complain about it. Complain about having to wake up early, complain about the teacher’s ‘seating plan’ separating me and my best friend, [...]
Continue Reading >A world apart…But not so different
Sometimes, I look at the kids we work with and I reflect on my life at their age and their life now. Sometimes their life, their circumstances seem so different to how mine were at their age and I struggle to relate. I was made to go to school, 5 days a week, 3 terms [...]
Continue Reading >School Strike
I remember one day at school there was a power cut and we were all sent home for the day for health and safety reasons (no power meant the fire alarm wouldn’t work). It was great! A free day off school! For kids in Kibera, a day off school is not such good news. It [...]
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