From 2013 Ecologia worked in partnership with International Peace Initiatives (IPI) at the Kithoka Amani Children’s Home (KACH) in Meru County, Kenya. The mission of KACH is to keep orphaned and vulnerable children in the community where they grew up, which preserves the child’s network of support. At KACH, the children can live safely and have access to a quality education and a ‘normal’ life. Many of the children have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS or had been abandoned by families unable to care for them because of extreme poverty.

At KACH 35 local children were supported and educated while their mothers were given the skills, training and resources they needed to break the long-term cycles of poverty they were entrapped within. Ecologia worked with IPI to provide funding for school uniforms, supplies and funding for school fees for primary and secondary schools for all Kithoka Amani Community Home children, based on a belief that education would also help to lift families out of the cycle of poverty. The children were supported through their education by donors enrolled in a child sponsorship programme developed by Ecologia Youth Trust to help pay for school fees. This support was immensely valuable as Secondary education is expensive and out of reach for many children.

Karambu outside KACH
photo Ecologia

Dr Karambu Ringera, Founder and President of International Peace Initiatives explained the rationale behind the Community Home as follows: “I have consciously and conscientiously created a space that makes me proud to say that KACH is a place that enables children to find who they are; a place that shows a model of how we need to be treating children made vulnerable by circumstances they have no control of.”

In Meru, 21% of the population had no formal education. When girls became mothers, the vast majority dropped out of school. They faced rejection from the father of their child, their families and community. Many became homeless, with no chance of securing a decent job, forcing them into commercial sex work to survive and provide for their children.

With support from Ecologia Youth Trust, IPI delivered training to vulnerable women in detergent making, tailoring, tie-dye, catering, knitting, cosmetics, jewellery making and food processing. It changed the lives of women who previously had no means to support themselves or their children. The 2017 training in hairdressing for 20 vulnerable young women who were forced into commercial sex work through poverty was so successful, that in 2019 an ongoing 3-year training programme to train 105 young women was set up. Since 2013 over 300 disadvantaged women were enabled to step away from poverty and build bright, sustainable futures for themselves and their children.

Hairdressing training Year 3 Class. photo Ecologia

The project offered women an accredited Diploma in Hair & Beauty and included a leadership and mentorship programme which empowered the women to share their new awareness and knowledge with other vulnerable women in their communities. The course also included sex education, entrepreneurial skills, yoga, meditation and other vital life skills. Each of the women was also offered individual counselling by a qualified counsellor, to help overcome past traumas. Unfortunately, the Coronavirus pandemic caused delays and disruption to the training programme but it was able to resume in 2022. Support for the skills training was continued until the women graduated in August 2023.

2023 Graduate Edith
photo Liza Hollingshead

2023 Graduate Edith says: “Before coming to learn at IPI, I had no means to help myself. I was staying at home, alone with my child. I had no income. Now I know that my life can be better, and I can send my child to a good school. The challenge facing many women like me is the lack of resources and opportunity. I’m so happy that IPI and Ecologia can teach us skills and give opportunities to people like me who, without them, wouldn’t be able to meet our daily needs.”

The skills training at KACH was community led, with regular consultations with the people in and around Meru County to make sure that the training provided would benefit individuals and local communities in a sustainable way. All the trainees were encouraged and supported to create their own small businesses so that they had everything they needed to begin earning a good income after graduating from the training programmes.

Kenya – Tarnos School

Kenya-Tarnos School: photo Ecologia

In 2019 Ecologia Youth Trust went into partnership with Tarnos School in Kericho county, Kenya to support a centre of excellence for 300 economically deprived rural children.

Tarnos School is a one hour drive from Kericho, seven hours west of Nairobi. Founded in 2009, it is a low-cost community school for children from the surrounding areas who had been without a good quality school. Ecologia Trustee, Anne Skene, was a dedicated supporter of Tarnos School that was founded and funded by her husband, Danus Skene, a Scottish teacher and educationalist and his colleague Samuel Rugut, a Kenyan secondary Head Teacher who became leader of the school.

Tarnos School: photo Ecologia

When the school started, the first 50 pupils came to a simple, single building. Each year the school expanded and by 2015 there were facilities for a full eight-year primary school and two nursery years accommodating children aged 4-14. The school developed to a student population of 300 spread across the 11 classes and expanded to 13 classes as the Junior Secondary developed. The founders aimed to keep class sizes to less than 35 to give pupils a better chance of success. The school was committed to making sure all pupils qualified to attend the best Secondary Schools in Kenya.

The plan was for every single child to go on to continue their education at Secondary School. A high percentage of the children, due to the excellent grades achieved at Tarnos, went on to very good Secondary schools where they benefitted from a quality education and the skills to set them up for success.

The New Science Lab at TarnosIn 2017, the Kenyan Government introduced the new Competency Based Curriculum, which was competence and skill based in response to emerging social, technological and economic demands of the workplace. This new system focused on the ability of students to self-learn, nurture life-long learning, and develop skills in critical thinking, problem solving, digital literacy, communication and collaboration, and creativity. To address these educational changes, work on building a Science Laboratory began at Tarnos.

Kenya – children: photo Ecologia

The installation of the laboratory meant that Tarnos School was equipped to adhere to the new requirements of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education within Kenyan education and to offer Junior Secondary education to its pupils, increasing the enrolment potential of Tarnos School from 300 to 405 pupils. In 2022, Ecologia Youth Trust received a grant from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMECHE) to fully fund the construction the new science lab at Tarnos, which was completed in 2023.

Kenya – New Science Lab: photo Ecologia

The Science Laboratory increased access to STEM education for disadvantaged rural children, especially young girls, thus coming some way to closing the gender gap in STEM education. According to the United Nations, ‘A significant gender gap has persisted throughout the years at all levels of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines all over the world. Even though women have made tremendous progress towards increasing their participation in higher education, they are still under- represented in these fields.’

Many children were welcomed at Tarnos whose families couldn’t cover their school fees as the policy was that local children received a good education regardless of their financial circumstances. However, this resulted in a financial shortfall and a cut in teachers’ salaries. Ecologia supported Tarnos to ensure teachers were paid a proper salary, thus securing quality teachers and the long-term viability of the school. Also provided was help with school fees, text books and IT equipment.

Tarnos school is in a very remote area and although a huge part of school life is after-school activities and events, many of the children’s families didn’t have access to transportation and so walking was their only option. To make sure that the Tarnos children didn’t miss out on any inter-school activities such as sports days and music competitions, Ecologia helped to source a school bus to offer transport to and from school as well as to these extra-curricular events.

Flushing Toilets and Sanitation at Tarnos School

Ecologia Youth Trust helped the school to build a new ecological sewerage system and toilet block. In September 2021, work began on the sewerage project which aimed to increase sanitation at the school to improve the children’s health. New ablution blocks were built and a septic tank, with a water cleaning system where wastewater was recycled to irrigate the school’s farm. This was a great addition to the school that already processed a running water system with clean, fresh water available from a borehole with water pump, storage tanks and pipework, all powered by a generator.

This running water system had been installed in 2018 and had proven to be reliable and of value to the school, supplying its kitchen and dormitories with clean, fresh water, and had been designed to accommodate additional use from the sewerage system. Before the freshwater system was installed, the school depended on collecting rain from the gutters in rain barrels, but there was never enough water as the school is in an area of low rainfall with reliable rains only twice a year. The availability of clean, fresh water from the 180m-deep borehole made an enormous difference to health and wellbeing of Tarnos’ children, and provided water for irrigation to grow food on site.

Kenya – Toilets: photo Ecologia

Clean water, basic toilets, and the implementation of good hygiene practices are essential to survival, health, and well-being. In Kenya, diseases relating to poor water and sanitation is one of the leading causes of death in children under five years of age, with 50% of its total population receiving treatment in hospitals due to sanitation-related illnesses. This is because Kenya has the third-largest population of people whose only source of water comes from contaminated sources, and access to adequate facilities is unavailable – or insufficient – in many schools and communities. According to a recent report by The World Health Organisation and UNICEF (2019), only 59% of Kenyans have access to basic water services, approximately 50% of rural Kenyans do not have access to toilets, and only 14% have access to hand-washing facilities. Only 29% of Kenyans have access to safe and basic service sanitation.

Installing sewerage system: photo Ecologia

When the new sewerage system (septic tank, sewerage pipes and soak-away/water treatment) was installed, the water within the borehole could be kept clean and safe to use, as it was no longer at risk of contamination from the existing unsanitary “long-drop” toilets (pits with a platform for squatting).

In 2021, Ecologia Youth Trust received a £30,171 grant from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers Support Network to fully fund the installation of a new toilet blocks and sewerage system at Tarnos school to improve the health and wellbeing of the children who attend the school. In 2023 solar panels were installed to alleviate the increasing cost of electricity, making Tarnos School a demonstration of an innovative, ecological education facility.

Ecologia Youth Trust (1995-2024) was a Scottish based charity based at the Park, Ecovillage Findhorn, founded by Liza Hollingshead and brought to a close in 2024. Over the years it helped transform the lives of over 56,000 children, young people and families affected by poverty, inequality, disease and climate change in 7 different countries: Russia, Georgia, Thailand, Myanmar, Kenya, Uganda and Scotland.

Ecologia Youth Trust

Ecologia Youth Trust, 1995 – 2024, supported children, young people and families in many countries, including Russia, Thailand, Myanmar, Scotland, Kenya and Uganda. Founder Liza Hollingshead.