The Samson Chivatsi African Children's Appeal

The Samson Chivatsi African Children's Appeal (SCO27998) was established in 1998 by Maureen and Ian McIntyre, after visiting a school whilst on holiday in Kenya. They were so affected by the poverty, poor health and lack of facilities at the school that, on returning to Scotland, Maureen set up the charity and sponsorship programme to give the poorest children access to a good education. The charity was named after the first child that Maureen and Ian sponsored.

Since then, the Charity has built a school in the village of Utange which is 20 minutes from Mombasa. This school and a rented kindergarten school now have almost 600 sponsored children. The charity has installed electricity, drilled a bore hole for fresh water and introduced a school feeding programme. The school is used for adult education projects in the evening.

Kenyan vaccination officers recently praised the school for having the healthiest children they had seen in any of the schools they had visited. The school is also achieving very good academic standards and many of the children are qualifying for secondary school.

Kenyan secondary education is oversubscribed and expensive and there are no secondary schools in the vacinity. Therefore, our graduates have to travel a long way to school and they often have to board in very basic accommodation. This siginificantly adds to the costs. Until now the charity has paid for these children to attend secondary school through general fundraising and sponsorship.

We need to build them a local Secondary School as we can no longer sustain the numbers of children graduating.

This year the Charity purchased land near the primary school and we hope to have the secondary school under construction this year (2006).

The Charity is run by a small team of unpaid officers, with the help of enthusiastic fundraisers and sponsors, so all of your generously donated money goes to where it is needed most.

Please help in any way you can.