Milele has recently been working closely with Regent High School in Camden, London. We wanted to say a very big thank-you to them for taking part in Milele's 'Bring a Book' project by donating their old and unwanted books, which have now been given out to two schools in Kenya.

Royal Academy and New Life School in Mtwapa, Kenya have both benefited from the books from Regent High School in London. The children were very excited to receive them and the teachers were thrilled. One of the teachers receiving books through the Bring a Book project said:

"Thank-you so much for these books—the children love them. They enjoy reading them so much, the only problem is getting the books back at the end of the reading hour!"

Royal Academy is a small local school based in a shanty town, Mtwapa, on the east coast of Kenya. The school works on providing low cost education to children in the area who cannot afford school fees. The director, Mr Bosco, said how pleased he was to be able to read with the children; the books will make a huge difference to their work. New Life School are also benefiting from the books from Regent High (Camden, London). New Life school is also a small school, providing basic education to children in the area who cannot afford school fees. The director, Madam Esther, set the school up because she had no way of educating her own children. This is a common problem and now the school is growing, with more than 50 families asking for their children to attend.

Without basic resources, both these schools are struggling to provide a good level of education for their students. With these new books, the schools hope to dramatically improve literacy, reading, writing and spelling skills.

Follow up work:

Royal Academy has already hosted a Milele volunteer, Agnes, for a few months. She worked with the school to help them arrange the books and use them in small groups with the children. The children very much enjoyed the reading groups and got involved and engaged in learning through books.

After our trip in January we hope to bring you more feedback on the Bring A Book project - keep your eyes peeled on the site for more information.

Once again, thanks so much to Regent High and all our schools on the Bring a Book project, your donations are making a huge difference already.

For more information on our other work with Regent high school and to see photos of some of their home-made dolls being distributed, look at our other news articles.

Amy

Hello everyone! Welcome to our monthly updates.We really pass our thanks to everybody who has contributed towards Milele program no matter how little or small it was but we really appreciate your effort and it has helped someone and you will be blessed.

Recently we have been working with Agnes with the books at Royal Academy thus making sure they are in good use. As well to all other project which received the books have adapted the same idea. This idea has really helped the kids to know how to read at a very young age.

We also visited some of the family's of the children who received mosquito net and it was really amazing to see how the parents appreciated your donation hence you have save a future leader from malaria.

Currently we started small projects for our sponsored kids family's who are not able to take care for themselves yet.  We have chicken project and fire wood business which will help them earn a living.

Our sponsored kids plus the new ones are really doing good work in school and all this happened because of your support  we thank you for your support.

One of the biggest achievements of the trip so far was the books distribution. Some of the books collected from each participating school in England were carried to Kenya and handed out to schools with very limited resources in Kenya. Each school received between 90 and 100 books, which were age appropriate for the children there.

The kids were so excited even to be holding the books for the photographs, and just kept staring at them! One of the teachers at a kindergarten school was telling me that since receiving the books they have begun a daily reading session and at the end of the hour they have to practically wrench the books out of the children's hands. It is so lovely to see them using the books and enjoying them so much.

As time goes by I am hopeful that reading will become an important part of the school day for children at these schools, we will be doing lots of follow up work to keep you up to date with what is going on.

Enjoy the pictures!

Hello everyone! We just wanted to say a big thank-you to Old Mill Primary School in Broughton Astley for all their support with Milele.

I am also really excited to announce that they are the first school in the UK to be getting on board with the new Bring a Book project!

Their involvement and commitment will mean that children in Kenya will have greater access to books than ever before, all from old or unwanted books that are no longer useful to their owners here.

Also, a big thank-you goes to the deputy head Mr Davies and the year 6 classes for making me so welcome in their school last week. We had great fun singing and dancing (as well as learning a bit of swahili) and also learnt lots of interesting facts about Kenyan culture and different tribal traditions. Want to know which Kenyan tribe removes 6 teeth from the lower jaw as part of tribal initiation? Which is famous for their signiture dancing and which tribe most commonly practices traditional medicine and witch-doctors? Ask the year 6 children at Old Mill!

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the children were really engaged with a lively and passionate debate, deciding what would be the best use for the £200 they fundraised at the school christmas fayre last year (kindly donated by the school PTA). After a very close vote, the class decided that 40 new mosquito nets should be given to families in Kenya to help protect babies and young children from fatal Malaria; a disease which is one of the biggest killers of children under 5.

In the words of one of the children in their 'persuasive writing':

"It will be like Malaria doesn't even exist any more"

What a wonderful thought - it sounds pretty persuasive to me!

Thank-you once again to everyone at Old Mill, in particular to Helen at the PTA for making this visit possible and to Tracey and Lorraine in the Library for your support with the Bring a Book project!

Photos of the new nets will follow - keep your eyes peeled!