Add new classrooms and pave the floor of Terrian Academy

Entrepreneur

About Me

I am a Kenyan citizen, married with a boy and two girls. I have government training in early childhood development (ECD). I am currently pursuing my national diploma in ECD. I have worked in several private education institutions (Private School) since 1993 when I completed my formal education. My bitter realization was that many of our children cannot get quality early childhood education because the fees charged by these institutions are out of reach for our poor children.

This has led to many of our children seeking refuge in other backstreet informal schools set up by insincere business people whose objectives are to exploit the situation. These schools end up either not even paying its teachers in time or at all leading to very high rate of teacher turn over, there by denying the children the much needed continuity and consistency.

This made me quit employment from a private school situated in my current residential place. My main objective was to provide this much needed early childhood education to our poor children who were always being sent out of these schools for lack of school fees. I, in collaboration with other well wishers, set up a kindergarten named “The Terrian School”. We ask parents to pay a small fee (Kshs 500 or USD 5.5 per month) to help sustain teachers, who are more of volunteers. We, however, do not send any child away for lack of fees. Our children mostly come from poor parents who are either house helps or working as labourers around the estate.

It is in this background that I make this request for a loan (of USD 1,000 at interest rate of 10%) to facilitate the expansion of this Early Childhood Education Project, which provides educational opportunities for our poor children and employment opportunities to teachers.

My Business

The Terrian School:
Since the Kenya Government is currently not funding early childhood education, we saw it an obligation to work to assist the majority of our society whose children could not get better education. It with this background, that the idea to start The Terrian School was conceived. The school is situated in Utawala – Githunguri estate. Our children mostly come from poor parents who are either house helps or working as labourers around the estate.

Since inception of The Terrian School in January 2005, we dispatch an average of 30 pupils to standard one in public primary schools every year. The parents suggested that we incorporate lower primary school levels and in January 2009 we introduced standard one. Currently we have Baby Class, Nursery, Pre-Unit, Standards One, Two and Three, a pupil population of about 70, and four teachers. Our teachers are working as volunteers, being given a token of 3,500/= to 4,000/= a month, and are motivated by the fact that they give hope to those who were otherwise hopeless.

We have tried our best and our former children are doing very well in whichever schools they join.

Loan Proposal

We will use the loan to complete a classroom block that was started but never finished due to lack of funds. We have four doors and eight windows to fix. We also have three rooms to cement the floors.

If granted this, it will be our third loan from Zidisha Lender since 2011. The previous loans have helped us develop classrooms for our school, Terrian Academy. The last loan of Kshs 84,000/= helped us a lot in putting up a second iron sheet structured classroom which constituted three rooms. This amount from Zidisha and a little we could get from other sources helped bring the said building but could not finish it. We have to make windows, two per room and doors for the three rooms. The floors are also not yet cemeted. This needs to be done to create a conducive learning environment. The loan will therefore be used to accomplish this, or to push it to the next level.

Once again We would like to sincerely appreciate the support we have received from Zidisha Lenders. We hope you continue the support you have accorded us and help us help these needy children who can otherwise not afford the comfort of private schools in Kenya. Long live Zidisha, long live Lenders.

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