A great part of my day today was spent travelling from Nairobi to Lewa. Even in the best conditions the drive is long. Add on the chaotic Nairobi traffic, and you have a 6 hour trip (2.5 of which were spent getting out of the city). After settling in I met Faith Riunga, who is the Education Program Manager at Lewa. Faith is the kind of person a Foundation would want running any initiative it supported- organized, smart, hardworking, and refreshingly practical. She explained the departmental setup at Lewa, which separates Logistics, Human Resources, Finance and Purchasing into distinct units that supervise each other. According to Faith, the success of Lewa’s initiatives to date is greatly attributed to this extensive level of oversight. Naturally, it is both encouraging and a great comfort to see such a well run model implemented in projects we might support.

As it was quite late in the day, there was only time for one school visit today. This school is one that is already supported by Lewa’s Education Programs. Thus, although not one of the schools we are considering supporting, it was worthwhile visiting to get a sense of Lewa’s level of intervention, how they track their progress, and most importantly, their results so far.

Overall, it is clear that the school has greatly benefited from Lewa’s assistance. Simple indicators, such as attendance records, grade improvement, and classroom standards can attest to this. I was especially impressed with the standard of their library, which was very clean, organized, and dynamic for a village public primary school.