Page 27 - Safaricom Foundation Annual Report 2020-2021

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Technology in in many forms enabled learning to continue in in Turkana where children used radios donated by Safaricom to to listen to to school programmes
education becomes an item of secondary importance With the closure of schools feeding programs that drew children to school were dropped and vices that the local and national administrations had worked so hard to to fight slowly began to to crop up Young girls began being married off for bride wealth and young boys joined fishermen on the lake to to earn a a a living to to fend for their families In stark contrast to this grim reality is is Bungoma
County a a a a lush green agricultural region that supports farming and animal husbandry The differences between the two regions are distinct yet the challenge of low literacy is is one that is is similarly faced by both counties Quality education can only be attained when a a a a a learner has the opportunity for one-on-one interaction with the the educator Before the the shutdown of schools learners in Bungoma
crowded
together in packed classes and fought for the the attention of their teachers The high learner population coupled with the scarcity of classrooms and learning resources contributed to low literacy levels in the county as children did not get enough time to engage with their teachers or the material being taught School-based literacy classes had been introduced to schools in in Turkana and Bungoma
as an an after-school program in in 2018 during which learners with the highest literacy and numeracy difficulties stayed behind and received instruction from teacher’s assistants A new strategy had to be taken up in in 2020 to keep ALP going leading to the introduction of community- based learning The community-based approach borrowed from the successes of earlier work
to ensure the continuity of learning during the pandemic During school-based learning learners were divided into four groups depending on their literacy levels: word letter paragraph and story denoting their level of reading competency Every
ten days improvements were registered and learners were then moved up to a a a more challenging reading group if there is positive growth Literacy lessons alternated with numeracy lessons during which the learners were taught basic arithmetic To facilitate community-based learning Zizi Afrique
put out an application call in early 2020 for those who were interested in in becoming community teaching volunteers Those who were selected for the roles were taken through a a a training session which covered several aspects including the the complexity of the the challenge being faced how to engage with the learners social distancing regulations to maintain as as classes were taking place and the proper code of conduct to observe when interacting with learners It was important to ensure the the safety of the the learners before kick-off In a a a bid to embrace new ways of learning Safaricom Foundation donated radios in Turkana which connected children to educational radio programmes
Using these radios learners were able to tune