About Patmos Junior Foundation
Looking out over the multitude of tin roofs in the Mathare slums of Nairobi, you see broken lives and desperate people.
This informal settlement is mainly inhabited by people from the poorest back grounds.
Although Nairobi is the capital of Kenya, here in this settlement, there is no clean water, electricity, garbage retrieval or sanitation; people are hungry, living conditions are horrible.
However, a bright future is in the midst of such despair "Patmos Junior School"
Patmos Junior School became modestly in 2007 on low ebb with a feeding program from a local church where many children used to come for a Sunday school and could go hungry the rest of the day.
After witnessing a high rate of school going children increasing on Sundays just because of food, we realized the need to start an educational centre in the same premises.
Education remains the key to helping children break the cycle of poverty. It is a critical component to better jobs in the future.
Despite the challenges of serving Nairobi's neediest areas, Patmos Junior strives to provide quality educational extra - curricular and community environment programs.
The teachers and students are proud of their accomplishments and committed to expanding their opportunities for a brighter future of these children.
Strategic Plan for Development
A big challenge the school faces is how to make strategic investments.The school do not have enough savings to help it plan for its developmental needs. It may seem impractical for it to save since it is having a hard time trying to meet its expenses.For such reason,it cannot rely on budgets or develop a strategic plans.Therefore profits cannot be realized for the school to be self-sustainable unless it benefits from external financial resources.
- Acquire land with adequate space for classrooms,administrative offices,kitchen,lavatories,and recreational activities.
- Build permanent structures( preferably storey buildings to maximize space)
These investments improves the learning enviroment in effort to enhance the quality of education provided..Of course parents may be more inclined to pay higher fees for the improvement to the learning environments ,but they often want to see developments translate to better academic performances.
There are several ways that infrastucture developments could improve the delivery of education at the school .On the very basic level, many of the classrooms are inadequately partitioned.Students can hear everything being taught in the adjacent classrooms which is very distracting .Investing in proper partitioning of classrooms would allow the students to focus more on their lessons.
There is also a shortage of text books for the students to follow along.The teacher may only be able to lecture or lead a discussion on the subject.This makes it difficult to sufficiently cover all courses in the syllabus during regular school hours,hence why most students are taught later in the afternoon and during holidays.
If these type of issues were resolved through improvement in the infrastructure to create more condusive learning environment,the school management can realize an increase in fees from able parents who may wish to enroll their children on the school.
The key is to play an active role in strategic planning and participate in fund raising.It will ease the financial burden of financing the developments.Also when parents contribute financially ,it gives them a sense of ownership and responsibility for what is done.If donors are solely responsible for developments,it creates a spirit of dependency which is typically reflected by a very low school fee collection rate.For sustainable development it is paramount that the PTA is fully engaged in the process of strategic planning.
