Women Educational Researchers of Kenya organization in partnership with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is currently implementing a program targeting to enroll children in school.
According to Debrah Nyambane, Kajiado County Officer for Women Educational Researchers, the targeted children are categorized into three groups.
The first category involves children who were enrolled in school, but dropped out due to various factors, the second category are those who have attained the school going age but have not yet joined school, while the third category revolve around children who are already in school, but are at risk of dropping out.
“For now, our essence is to support children between 4-13 years old under the primary school section, however we also have programs targeting 4,000 secondary school learners, which entail mentorship programs like skill development and society adaptation. We are also supporting schools to develop the alumni platforms mainly to mentor students transiting from secondary schools,” said Nyambane.
Nyambane noted that there are three major factors in Kajiado, which cause children not to be enrolled in school or drop out altogether including the school environment, home environment and community factors.
“In Kajiado, the poverty level is at 26 percent, while parental ignorance on matters education is at 22.3 percent contributing majorly to poor enrollment of children in schools,” she stated.
The Out of school program is currently being implemented in five counties in Kenya including Kajiado, Narok, Kilifi, Tana River and Kwale.
The overall target is to enroll about 79,000 children, while the target for Kajiado is enrolling 7,000 children in all the sub counties’ 158 primary schools.