Original subtitles

Right now we are at

we are at a danger of closing up because

we cannot continue feeding kids

and we cannot also send them home just like that.

Children cannot even concentrate in class because they do not have food,

even if it is just two serving spoons for the children,

even if it is not going to be food, at least for them to concentrate in class.

In a world where education knows no bounds,

where passion and determination triumph over obstacles,

one extraordinary school stands tall

among them all !

the problem is financial ability

When I was in Kenya, they told me about a special school

where students are not only just students,

but they can be teachers as well.

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students singing

Welcome to Gilhada Academy School,

a school where students of five years old

are forced to stand in front of other colleagues and teach them.

My name is Anaske Emutu

Our teacher refused to come

and I decided to teach my fellow students.

I am five years old.

This special school is located in Kitengela region,

some 30 kilometres South of Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya.

Looking at it from above, you can clearly see that its scrambling infrastructure

but when you come closer, you cannot help but get stunned as the school’s classes are like this.

But this is not a big problem,

as more than 300 students gather here every day

in order to get some education.

How did this school start

and why does it plan to close soon?

This its extraordinarily story

Excuse me Madam, may I Come in ?

Yes Lucky, welcome

hey! this is the school fees

school fees lucky?. Yes.

You've been sent home. Yes.

okay

How much is this?

This young girl you see here is Mercy and she is the daughter of the founder

of this school and the Director of its day-to-day operations.

Lucky. We cannot keep you in school.

okay? Yes.

You're still going to go back home, tomorrow

You come back with Mom okay? Yes.

Because this is not even enough to buy a sandwich.

But it is fine.

She is the one who makes sure that students are ready for school at the right time,

keeps records of their school fees

and makes sure that they have eaten properly.

OK, this will be for cereals

And this is change

tomorrow.

okay, okay!

WALEO? Yes.

WALEO? Yes.

Please go, rush use a motorbike

Yes, we will.

Buy.... Cabbage.

She explained that the school started as a church

before growing to accommodate students.

when this school was started, it was as a community school.

It started as a church

And the kids who came to the church really needed an education.

So we said, why not? We had a room.

We started with that one room and

it went on from there.

In a matter of one year

We had more than 200 children coming here because of the food program

that was running.

The food program was having them lunch

And then they would go home at first

And then we began teaching and it went on from there

At first, the school worked as a charity,

providing shelter and food for poor students,

who are the children of their congregation at the church.

But when the news spread of a school which provides food,

more parents who were not able to send their students to other schools,

started to send them at Gihada Academy

and a few months later, the school’s capacity was full.

Now, what we didn't anticipate is that these children

the next day would come with their siblings

Now, if today we serve one boy

Tomorrow he will come with two sisters and so on And so forth

Right now we have a population of about 300 and 350 children.

And we started running it as a school.

They come, they learn they go home

The feeding program did not stop

We continued

The increase in the number of students was a big challenge to the school

but the elephant in the room

was the deteriorating state of Kenya's economy

The inflation in Kenya has almost hit double digits

and this has affected the prices of food,

which has doubled in some instances.

To respond to that, the school had introduced a small portion of school fees

to accommodate the rising cost of food,

but some parents don’t pay the money

yet they send their children to school anyway,

resulting in the scarcity of food as all students share

the few food paid by the minority of parents.

The results are these frightening scenes

where students have to fight ferociously in order to land

their hands on a small portion of food from the dish.

[ fighting for food ]

So right now at 2:10 we can only managed to feed a few kids.

Sometimes you get some food, whatever we budgeted for

Considering the limitations of the funds we charge here,

we serve a little bit of food for at least the majority.

Then the rest sometimes they're even forced to fight for the food.

Some parents have tried to play their role in order to keep this school running,

but their poverty has restricted how much they can do to help the school.

This Lucky, she was sent home to bring school fees

and his father is willing to pay.

However, he doesn’t have all the money he is required to pay,

but chooses to pay a small portion of it

in order to allow her daughter to attend school,

as he tries to find the remaining fees.

However, Lucky didn’t meet her luck today.

She enters the Director’s Office to present her school fees

but she is not allowed to proceed to the class,

as her pay is lower than what is required.

Instead, she is given a paper to present to her father

and asked to get out of the Office

despite the fact that the school is 20 kilometres from her home.

We met her outside and she didn’t hold back her disappointments.

Angry that she cannot study

despite the best of his effort by her poor father,

It's not good.

And after all of that,

they do not have food to eat in school.

Some of our parents cannot even afford

food or water

If we come with a little bottle of water here, it's over

Before lunch, All you have to do is just sleep.

You can't even go to play and enjoy yourself

just like other children because you are hungry

That is what I will ask for, just for now.

Thank you.

So you mean you have walked 20 kilometers to your school? Yes.

And that's what you do every day. Yes.

Lucky clarifies that the state of other students,

including their uniform and shoes,

reflect the poverty of their families and their school’s

and fragility of their country’s economy.

Some of us just wear any kind of uniforms

purple, pink, green, yellow, any kind

because we cannot afford the fee of the uniforms

it’s not fair

some of us just come with hair

it looks like you’ve never ever seen the barber shop

It’s not fair,

it seems like our school is turning into a prison

Among students whose parents cannot pay school fees

include this young boy here,

Joseph who is just 14 years old.

My name is Joseph

We met him when he was trying to find something to eat

after he was expelled from the school.

I am looking for food,

I have been expelled from the school and I don’t have anything to eat.

Even if I can go back to school,

I can struggle to focus on the courses

because of hunger.

Lack of space and scarcity of food are not the only problem

Mercy has to think about when she sits down in her office.

Her school, also faces an acute shortage of professional teachers

and that affects the quality of education provided at this school.

the problem is financial

the teachers have decided not to report to school because of lack of payments

so because of money, we use it for the feeding program

buying water

so it has been a challenge, so they have not reported today

and yesterday, then

we’ve trained our children now

one of them is trying to teach the kids, the other kids in class

you can come in and see

There are only 10 teachers who are not well paid

and some of them don’t show up at school

as they go to make money from other areas.

If that happens, students themself

must find a teacher among them to teach them.

Today, this 5 year old is teaching her colleagues

and she is proud of her work.

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My name is Anaske Emutu and I am five years old.

Our teacher refused to come and I decided to teach my fellow students.

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Mercy admits that her school cannot find a way of hiring more teachers,

additional to the very few they have.

Also, they don’t have the means to keep up with the school feeding program

especially that parents are not eagerly participating with the initiative.

As a result, Mercy thinks that they are about to close the school

if nothing is done pretty quickly to save their dwindling accounts.

You can help this school to maintain their activities through givinglife.com

with links found in descriptions and pinned in the top comments.

The health of a country is measured through the quality of its education,

and it is everyone’s responsibility

to make sure that young children are equipped with quality of education

that will help them to spur their talents in the future.