Projects We Support

Selected Project:  

Kalacha Nursery School Northern Frontier District, Kenya

 
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Kalacha Nursery School

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Who are they: Kalacha Women's Self-Help group decided they needed a new nursery school in 2003. Through much hard effort and planning they presented the concept to WildiZe for funding.

What do they do: Early Childhood Development for children of Kalacha community. Parents of the children volunteer their time and contribute toward the schools needs.

How does WildiZe help them: Funded the building of a nursery school and also provided through our donors, a collection of beany-baby toys, for which the children of this area had never seen such a thing. The introduction of these toys was a bit rough, but after much explanation by the women to the children with the help of Alex Sharamo, the children finally began to enjoy these new toys. We made it clear that the toys were for their use whenever they wanted them, rather than to be put away for safe-keeping or as something too special to use.  We intend to follow-up to see how the toys and the children have fared!!

Results: The school was constructed successfully, and WildiZe was shown the school in 2006, complete with the children, both boys and girls, performing traditional song and dance.  It was a wholly different experience seeing these little ones performing compared to the usual adult displays! The outside of the school has the name "ELI" built out of palm bark in thanks to WildiZe's founder. The new school is cleaner, has better air circulation and easier to use than the old construction of mud walls.


FAST FACTS:

Area:Chalbi Desert, Northern Frontier District (NFD), Marsabit District

Kalacha Dida is Gabbra meaning 'open space'. Kalacha is situated on the edge of an oasis in the Chalbi Desert, between Maikona and North Horr, and 40 miles south of the Ethiopian border, and east of Lake Turkana. The village of Kalacha stands at the norther end of the desert, with a settlement of about 12,000 people. The oasis is surrounded by doum palm and the nomadic Gabbra bring their camels and small stock in to water.

It is only by flying low over this vast and arid wilderness can one truly appreciate the scale of it's beauty and solitude of the approx. 100,00sq km sandy desert.

Long ago this area was in fact part of the lake and during periods of unusal precipitation large areas still fill to form very broad and shallow areas of standing water.