Karibuni Children has been in operation for nearly 27 years. We are rooted and trusted in the communities we work and can clearly see the impact that has been made in the lives of children and their families through our educational support model. Children who have been supported by us are now in a range of careers, including but not limited to biochemists, social workers, teachers, hairdressers, nurses, accountants, electricians, tailors, masons, mechanics, engineers, all of whom have become self-sufficient, independent, productive citizens who are making a positive contribution to their families, communities, and country.
Despite the educational challenges that children have faced over the last two years, we have seen impressive trends in attainment in the children we support, compared with the national average in Kenya. The graphs below show the cumulative percentages of grades achieved at Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) level by Karibuni Children (represented on the left in green), compared with the national average (represented on the right in blue) for the past 3 years. On average, over the past 3 years, 27% more Karibuni sponsored children have achieved grades A to C- at KCSE, than the national average.
Below are three further bar graphs, showing cumulative percentages of grades achieved at Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE level) by Karibuni Children (represented on the left in green), compared with the national average (represented on the right in blue) for 2021, 2020 and 2019. On average, over the past 3 years, 20% more Karibuni sponsored children have achieved at least 300 at KCPE, than the national average.
We believe that, as well as our approach to partnering with high quality educational instit, the actions we took to address increased barriers to learning that arose with the emergence of the pandemic, are also to thank for these favourable statistics. In 2020, to facilitate home learning, we provided 72 solar radios and 6 tablets in Tharaka, 11 tablets in Limuru, took measures to improve internet connectivity in Embakasi and Tharaka and funded remedial tuition in Embakasi and Limuru.
To ease the hunger crisis which emerged with the pandemic, we provided school children with a total of 100,316 nutritious meals across our different projects (a combination of breakfast, lunch, and dinner) and 6,750 food packages to families that would have otherwise been unable to feed themselves due to the COVID-19 related restrictions, redundancies, and business closures.