Aiding local organisations to meet key community needs

In a moment of complete enthusiasm, school children chant their reading pledge, ‘I pledge to read stories for fun, to imagine, explore and learn by reading every week at least for one hour, I will boost my brain power’ — a customary practice before they settle in for a library lesson facilitated by their teacher.

It is one of the weekly library lessons Grade Four pupils at Tumaini Primary School in Umoja, Nairobi enjoy courtesy of their new modestly furnished library.

Before the library, the children’s literary diet was confined squarely to textbooks, supplied by the Ministry of Education.

This was not sufficient, as Beryl Obondo, a library teacher at the school explains. “The learners had a difficult time expressing themselves, they could not engage in public speaking nor hold debates, and generally the performance was dismal.”

She shares how since the establishment of the school library slightly a year ago, the mean score of the school has gone up from 264 to 284 because all the learners are exploring books beyond the course work.

Deficiency of literacy materials

The school library was initiated by a non-governmental organisation, Start A Library Trust to influence a strong reading culture among primary school children facing a deficiency of literacy materials outside their learning areas.

Since its inception in 2012, the organisation, which started as an employee-led initiative of Storymoja Publishers has established 283 libraries, and distributed at least 400,000 books in 22 counties.

“We saw a need to give back to the community, so every month we (staff) could collect books and take them to a school of choice. But we realised that sometimes teachers shelved the books and failed to give them to students, so we began mulling over starting a library instead of donating books,” says Evelyne Mwandia, executive director, Start A Library.

Evelyne adds there is an unmet need in primary schools for storybooks because purchasing storybooks by parents ranks very low in their priority list and budgetary allocation to schools is constrained.

“Parents have basic need to think about, such as, health care, school fees, and food. Often, purchasing story books is not an urgent need considering most of these children come from humble backgrounds,” she says. Evelyne says that the book project has improved the accessibility of literacy materials, consequently boosting education competencies among school-going children.

Additionally, they have been able to train teacher librarians, mentor children, and offer institutional skills that will sustain the libraries.

Capacity building programme

Evelyne is keen to mention that their success would not have been possible without going through a capacity-building programme dubbed ‘Yetu’ which helps Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to function more professionally and efficiently to achieve their targets and goals.

The Yetu Initiative started in 2014, just about the time Start A Library Trust was transitioning from a department within an organisation to a trust in need of appropriate expertise to navigate the CSO ecosystem.

Yetu enabled Start A Library Trust to develop systems and strategies that helped them function effectively, such as compiling impact reports for their partners, instituting robust financial systems, and monitoring frameworks.

Through Yetu, Start A Library leveraged these skills and knowledge transfer to open more than double the number of libraries they boasted before engaging Yetu.

According to Irene Gathinji, project director, Yetu, the initiative works with civil society organisations and local development organisations in the community to impart self-reliance and locally sustained development.

“Over the years, there has been a decline in donor funding to CSOs and challenges of locally mobilising for resources to help them meet their goals and that is where Yetu comes in to capacity build CSO to among other things, be sustainable,” says Irene

Irene says that some CSOs experience varying challenges as they try to realise their goals, such as failing to have a viable campaign plan for their projects, not appreciating and tapping their non-monetary value, and funding.

Since its inception, they have supported more than 300 CSOS to raise over Sh270 million for locally-led development projects serving different interests such as Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH), Gender-Based Violence, Water and sanitation, and Food provision.

CSOs are an important element in society for they champion the interests of the public in various capacities as such enabling them to function optimally is essential.

Yetu is a collaboration of the Aga Khan Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which have sponsored the initiative to the tune of Sh11 million since its inception.

And as the sun sets on the partnership, Yetu is looking at how it can self-sustain moving forward to assist more CSOs that need support and pivoting.

Challenges of CSO

There is still a perception that CSOs are started by individuals to benefit themselves rendering the community skeptical towards giving, says Irene.

“We also have the issue of governance of CSOs, which impacts how they function,” she explains.

To address this issue, she calls upon the operationalisation of the Public Benefits Organisation (PBO) Act of 2013 to among other things bring CSOs under one registration mechanism to hold them accountable.

Presently, NGOs in Kenya are regulated by the NGO Coordination Act of 1990.