August 2016

The children of Irovo are fascinated by the lives of children in other places — throughout Kenya, Europe, the world!

Which is why it is wonderful that the children of St Augustine’s Primary school in Preston, Lancashire are planning to get in contact with Shalom Academy in the new school year (September in the UK; January in Kenya).

Who knows what will become of this exciting connection across the miles. Plenty of smiles, hopefully.

To cement links even further, headteacher John Entwistle has become a trustee of Strive for Excellence.

The most exciting news yet for Strive for Excellence…

We have just completed the purchase of an acre of land in Irovo, destined to be the site of the new nursery/primary school: Shalom Academy.

The purchase took some time because we not only had to meet the legal requirements (through a lawyer, very similar to the UK), but also get the agreement of neighbourhood elders, chiefs and the wider community in two gatherings known as Barazas — one for the purchase and another for the subdivision of the land. In all, around 100 people from Irovo attended the outdoor meetings — at least in the future nobody can say they didn’t see it coming.

Now we’ve got to build the bloody thing.

(Below, the best pic yet of the new land with Vitalis and a crop of maize ready to be harvested.)

Part of our plan to grow the charity, we have applied to register with the Charity Commission, which means getting a registration number and hopefully qualifying for Gift Aid benefits. This should be a huge help to the next stage of fundraising.

The forms took a couple of days to write and complete – a bit like preparing for a big job interview, except there’s more at stake.

Fingers crossed.