Mnarani Aid
A UK based charity devoted to improving the education of the pupils of Mnarani Primary School, Kenya.
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 | On the 25th April Ian and friends will be carrying out a sponsored walk from Aylsham to Cawston and back in aid of Mnarani Aid. He has been in serious training; parking the car one meter farther down the drive! If you wish to sponsor them please use the 'Donate' button on the Home page |
 Water Tank being fitted. | The Water Tank which the School had won for their efforts during the Environment Competition last year being fitted and the water being connected. Final task? |
 After Painting.  After painting | The kitchen is now looking good after being painted. Soon all will finished. |
 Windows being fitted.  Fitting the windows | The door and windows have arrived and are being fitted. Soon all will be done. |
 Visiting the Kitchen.  Seeing the Food Aid | This week Government Administrators came to the School to see the improvements that have been made. They were very impressed with the progress of the kitchen and organization of the food aid and very pleased with the continuing work on building the new toilets. The Administrators were also delighted with the new desks from Austria. |
 Happy Children.  Austrian Donors and the desks | These 52 desks were presented to the School by Mr Franl Ferreria on behalf of an Austrian charitable organization called Asante. Asante also sponsors some of the young orphaned pupils of the School. Mnarani Aid sends its grateful thanks to Asante for their help.
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 Flooring materials  The guys at work. | Work has started on finishing the kitchen. The walls are being plastered and the new floor laid. It will not be long until the kitchen is in use.
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| Headmaster Hassan has told us that the local Government of Kilifi has commenced finishing the toilets that Mnarani Aid started before we concentrated on the kitchen. The authority will be spending Kshs 900,000/= on them. There will be 24 new toilets, 12 each for the boys and girls. Great news. More personal hygiene = more days at school = better education. The Kilifi Government are also going to spend Kshs 500,000/= on the two unfinished classrooms to bring them up to standard. But that will have to wait until we have completed the kitchen as we currently use the classrooms for cooking. Well done to Headmaster Hassan for convincing the Local Authority to help the School. |
 Receiving the gift  The fantastic Donors | The School has been presented with Kshs 103,500. This money was collected and donated by the children of the Gateway School for Communication and Technology from Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. Their teacher Colette Rathman wrote; " Let me give you a little synopsis of what my class did to raise the money. Last year I involved my class in two ePals projects. One of which was involved with Mnarani Primary School in a cultural exchange through email. I entered the collaborative projects in a competition called the "Innovation in Education Awards", organized by the Berks County Community Foundation. Many schools from our county had entered, with most being high schools from wealthy suburban neighborhoods. My students, who are 11 and 12 years old, from the poverty stricken area of the county,didn't think they had a chance to win because their competitors were so much older than they were. The grand prize was a grant for $1,250.
The judges were county business leaders and professors from area universities, who walked around looking at all of the exhibits as they asked the students questions about their projects. Afterwards, they announced the 2nd and 3rd place winners, and at that point, my students had it in their heads that they didn't even place. Well, you should have seen the shock on their faces when it was announced that their School had won 1st place. The audience all laughed when my kids couldn't control their excitement, and started jumping up and down in celebration.
When we got back to school the next day, I asked my class what they would like to do with the money. They had learned previously that their friends from Mnarani Primary had had their school lunch program cut, and that the students weren't being fed. My students decided that they wanted to give all of the money to the students of Mnarani Primary, and asked me if they could do more fund raising to help them. We got permission from the superintendent of the district to give the grant money and all other money we raised to Mnarani Primary. We then held a dress-down day: students each paid $1.00 to come to school dressed in their regular clothing instead of their school uniforms. After that, we made holiday candygrams for students and faculty to buy for $.50 each. Then we sold Valentine's Day announcements in our school newspaper for $.50 and $1.00 each. All of that money went to the students of Mnarani Primary, too." The money will go towards buying a fuel efficient stove to help cook the UN World Food Program rations. |
| 22nd Nov 2009 |
We returned this week from visiting Mnarani. We are pleased to say that the school is going from strength to strength. Headmaster Hassan has been given permission to open a unit for children with learning difficulties. Most importantly he also has the funding from the Government to run it. So it should not be long before it is up and running. The School's profile after the success of the Hand Wash day and the children's success in winning the water tank is going higher and higher. The Environment Ministry has allocated funds for the School to plant more trees and shrubs in the School grounds. Last week, Hassan hosted a delegation of fifty other Headmasters who wanted to see our improvements and find out how Hassan is managing to make them. Kilifi Town Council has put in its budget monies for new classrooms and a wall around the School grounds. This will improve security and keep the area clean and tidy. The kitchen looks great. We now need funds to finish it off. Outstanding works are; a floor, plastering the walls and fitting doors and windows. The computer lab is turning into a great success. Fourteen systems up and running. Thanks again to all of you who help to make this possible. Ian & Wendy |
15th Oct 2009
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Mnarani Primary hosted Kenya's start to the UN's 'Hand Wash Program' An event to focus on the washing of children's hands as a major part of the fight against diseases such as dysentery and diarrhoea. |
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For the launch of this campaign the School hosted Government Ministers from the Education and Health Departments as well as 10,000 children and 400 adults. Well done to all for putting Mnarani on the World map. For more information see the Kenyan newspapers, The Nation and Standard on-line and www.globalhandwashingday.org/ |
5th Oct 2009 <
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The pupils won a water tank in a environment competition. Just what we need for the new kitchen. See here for the Daily Nation press article. |
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| 15th Sep 2009 |
Good to hear that Amanda and Ian Gardner visited the School and are looking to raise the funds needed to buy the cookers. Thank you for your efforts. |
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The roof is finished! A great job done by all concerned. |
 
| The School breaks for the summer holidays on Friday. Hassan is going to Nairobi to work on his Master's degree, so building the kitchen will resume at the end of the month. Food is not provided during the holidays. |
 
| These guys really build fast. The next bit of good news is we now have the funding for the roof. Just the floor, plastering(lowest priority), windows, doors and the fuel efficient cookers to go. Please help if you can. |
 
| The kitchen is making good progress. However, because the price of building materials has dramatically increased more funds are required to finish the building. Please help if you can. |
 Current feeding arrangements | As the School is now going to receive Food Aid it has been decided to change the priorities of the use of the current funds available from Mnarani Aid. To make use of the Food Aid a kitchen and secure food store is required. Mnarani Aid has sent all its currently available funds to the Headmaster, Hassan Abdulatif, to start building these facilities. Unfortunately that means that the Programme to refurbish the remaining classrooms is on hold. It is considered that solving the problem of malnutrition in the children must have the highest priority. |
Jun 2009
Peter and Lynda Bishop - Thanks for visiting and taking your gifts to the School and for introducing some friends to the School. It is good to see supporters visiting the School so they can see the conditions for themselves enabling them to really understand the problems faced by the teachers and children.May 2009
A big thank you to the Pye's for their donation of football shirts.May 2009
 | The Rotary Clubs of Aylsham, UK and Montargis, France each gave MnaraniAid £1000 to help improve the School. A fantastic amount. We are sure that all in Mnarani will be extremely grateful. |
Mar 2009
 | During February the Charity was able to install a 250m pipe to carry fresh water to the toilet area. This water is for the children to wash their hands thereby keeping a high level of hygiene. This should cut down school days lost to illness which will help their education performance. |
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We also delivered the children's football shirts very kindly donated by Bryan Gunn on behalf on Norwich City Football Club. The children were so very pleased to receive these. At last the school players look like a real team.
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Work was commenced on building two new large toilet blocks. The holes were started and are down to 3m deep. They will be finished when funds allow. |
A meeting was held with the Kilifi Rotary Club, MnaraniAid and Mr Hassan. It was agreed that Mr Hassan would write a formal report (click here to see report) detailing the School's requirements and the Rotary Club would use this as the basis of a request to the UK Aylsham Rotary Club for assistance. This report has been completed and given to Kilifi Rotary Club.
Dec 2008
During a trip to Mnarani during November 2008 projects costing £1400 were completed. The projects which were selected by the Headmaster, Hassan, included completing four Girl's Toilets, four new desks, re-flooring three classrooms and fitting them with metal doors, and fitting transparent panels in the darkest classrooms and in the Staffroom.