6.5 weeks ago I thought I would be boarding a plane tomorrow with a CRED team bound for Spurgeons Academy in Nairobi.
6 weeks ago increased Al-Shabab activity in Kenya resulted in the FCO changing its advice to British nationals travelling to Kenya and as a result our planned trip to Spurgeons had to be cancelled.
Thankfully we were able to relocate it to Uganda, and so tomorrow I am boarding a plane, albeit with a slightly smaller team, destination Entebbe. We don't actually get there until Sunday morning, but once there we will be delivering an activity and education week for some of the Acholi children who currently don't get the opportunity to go to school due to the level of poverty that they and their families endure.
For me this is a really wonderful outcome to a very sad decision of having to cancel the trip to Spurgeons. The Spurgeons kids will always have a very special place in my heart, but to be able to now go and deliver some education to those who otherwise have none is a beautiful opportunity. Add to that the fact that the only previous bit of access to education was through Natalie, my Gap-year daughter who spent 2 months 'teaching' up to 60 of the children at a time, then this becomes even more special.
Since Natalie finished there, the children haven't had any follow up so its lovely to be able to go in and just spend a week of high-intensity revision and embedding of basic concepts. And then in October we have two more CRED teams going over who will be able to revise, embed and take it all a bit further.
It certainly is no substitute for full-time education, and whilst we are out there this time I'd like to start a conversation with the Acholi folk about what options there are for getting these children into school - is it funding to help them pay the costs of going to nearby schools, or indeed would they like a school set up in their community? It's a decision the Acholi need to make, not us - we might be able to help realise the dream through access to funding, resources etc, but the project must be their dream, owned by them.
The team going out tomorrow have all done brilliantly at pulling together a new programme based on the different needs of the Acholi kids compared to the Spurgeons students. All credit to them for their unquenchable enthusiasm to get so much sorted amidst GCSE and AS exams - with that level of enthusiasm I am excited to see what they achieve.
And the lovely final note is that, although we can't go to Spurgeons, because we have 46kg of baggage allowance to get to Kenya and then only 30kg to get from Kenya to Uganda, many team members are taking out 16kg of resources each for Spurgeons which will get offloaded during the 10 hours we have overnight in Nairobi.
So Spurgeons will still benefit by quite a lot, and the Acholi will be blessed as well - proof that every cloud has a silver lining.
And of course the other silver lining is that I get to have a week in Uganda with Natalie as well!
I'll be blogging here sometimes during the coming week, but do also check out the CRED blog which will be updated every day. You can find it via www.credteamtrips.org.
Back in UK in time for Tour de France, and to see Andy Murray in the Wimbledon final ;-)
6 weeks ago increased Al-Shabab activity in Kenya resulted in the FCO changing its advice to British nationals travelling to Kenya and as a result our planned trip to Spurgeons had to be cancelled.
Thankfully we were able to relocate it to Uganda, and so tomorrow I am boarding a plane, albeit with a slightly smaller team, destination Entebbe. We don't actually get there until Sunday morning, but once there we will be delivering an activity and education week for some of the Acholi children who currently don't get the opportunity to go to school due to the level of poverty that they and their families endure.
For me this is a really wonderful outcome to a very sad decision of having to cancel the trip to Spurgeons. The Spurgeons kids will always have a very special place in my heart, but to be able to now go and deliver some education to those who otherwise have none is a beautiful opportunity. Add to that the fact that the only previous bit of access to education was through Natalie, my Gap-year daughter who spent 2 months 'teaching' up to 60 of the children at a time, then this becomes even more special.
Since Natalie finished there, the children haven't had any follow up so its lovely to be able to go in and just spend a week of high-intensity revision and embedding of basic concepts. And then in October we have two more CRED teams going over who will be able to revise, embed and take it all a bit further.
It certainly is no substitute for full-time education, and whilst we are out there this time I'd like to start a conversation with the Acholi folk about what options there are for getting these children into school - is it funding to help them pay the costs of going to nearby schools, or indeed would they like a school set up in their community? It's a decision the Acholi need to make, not us - we might be able to help realise the dream through access to funding, resources etc, but the project must be their dream, owned by them.
The team going out tomorrow have all done brilliantly at pulling together a new programme based on the different needs of the Acholi kids compared to the Spurgeons students. All credit to them for their unquenchable enthusiasm to get so much sorted amidst GCSE and AS exams - with that level of enthusiasm I am excited to see what they achieve.
And the lovely final note is that, although we can't go to Spurgeons, because we have 46kg of baggage allowance to get to Kenya and then only 30kg to get from Kenya to Uganda, many team members are taking out 16kg of resources each for Spurgeons which will get offloaded during the 10 hours we have overnight in Nairobi.
So Spurgeons will still benefit by quite a lot, and the Acholi will be blessed as well - proof that every cloud has a silver lining.
And of course the other silver lining is that I get to have a week in Uganda with Natalie as well!
I'll be blogging here sometimes during the coming week, but do also check out the CRED blog which will be updated every day. You can find it via www.credteamtrips.org.
Back in UK in time for Tour de France, and to see Andy Murray in the Wimbledon final ;-)
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