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Sunday, December 30, 2012

Great suggestions from a relative

My family is quite international. I received a mail from my moms cousin, who lives in Paris and has been promoting my project there. She's been to visit and truly enjoyed her time in Excellent care center and school. She is a very smart lady and made a connection with an organisation in France. I got the email in french and had to struggle a bit to understand what they said, but it was a company who wanted projects in Africa. I'm unclear of what they could help us with, but I'm going to skype with my relative tomorrow to understand how they could help us. Hopefully I will learn more from that conversation. I hope this organisation can help us in some way!



Friday, December 14, 2012

Hard work...

Working really hard on a thing that I will reveal soon. One of the things that will help me in this is to post a video of Dan, who is a new friend of the school to the web site. Here is the result:



Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Go for building

Some of the Swedes in Kenya that is cooperating with me on the Excellent project decided to add their money to the building project. This means we can use the time when the students are not in school rebuilding one part of the school. It is going to give us 6 new classrooms, with new floors, walls and ceiling. This is really good news and mean that we can mak a substantial impact on the school and that the next year is going to be a lot better for the kids!

Monday, December 10, 2012

Refugee deported to Afghanistan tomorrow!

Last week I was very active on facebook, supporting the IB students in Sweden in their struggles to help a fellow IB classmate to stay in Sweden. Immad is from Afghanistan and he came to Sweden three years ago. He was justa a kid and all alone, because the Talibans killed his whole family. He started the IB program and got many friends and a good life in Sweden. Today the migration department decided to deport Immad and tomorrow he is flying back to Afghanistan. To stop this horrible act to happen, the girls protested by starting a facebook, made it possible to sign your name on a petition and demonstrated outside their local town hall. They even got a few politicians to join them, but to no avail! I helped by spreading the facebook posts to everyone I know and all are very upset about the decision to send Immad back to an most unclear future. How can a country who has a history of allowing people in need to come, deport an 18-year old IB student who is all alone in the world and only has a dangerous and uncertain life in his war torn homecountry? I'm ashamed of being Swedish right now!



Sunday, December 9, 2012

The true size of Africa


This image from the internet is quite interesting. It is hard to grasp what a huge continent we live in! It's even more interesting that sometimes when people ask me where I live I just answer: Africa. Take a look at the right where Europe is marked within Africa and use a magnifying glass to find Sweden, where I grew up. Talk about contrast! I know that there has been some controversy on how the maps are being portrayed, but this image really makes it clear! One other prejudice people have about Africa is that we all lives in huts. I could not believe my ears when I met American students in England a few years ago and they where concerned that I was very poor. It's really an ignorant view of people in other parts of the world. I know that one can argue that USA is a very big country, and they have a lot to consider within their own borders but I still think this is extremely sad. When my parents lived in America, my mom told me that she often got blank stares when she said she came from Sweden. Finally she realised that no one knew what or where Sweden was so she said Scandinavia and that cleared things up a little bit. I find it really unthinkable that some are so ignorant about other countries. Luckily, my friends in ISK are not! The know things about the world that few other teenagers do, and most of them have lived in many countries on different continents.



Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Folders, flyers and film for Oakland school

Today I produced a folder a flyer and two films for Oakland school in Rongai. Mercy, who is the principal of the school were working together with me, she wrote the text and I designed the folder and flyer. I had earlier filmed her out in the school, so I cut together a film I think presented their visions for the school well. They say that they want an "International type" school, with lots of academics, but also a place for the children to explore other talents, like theatre, arts, music and sports. It is interesting that they want to bring this to a small village outside of Nairobi and I think they are going to get a lot of interested parents. It all made me reflect on that things that are so normal and readily available for us international students, are not something regular schools in Kenya can provide for their students. I also compared it to the school in Mathare, where only basic academic is being taught. This school is more for middle class Kenyans in the village, but they are also taking on some orphans and trying to find sponsors for them, so they are showing a big social responsibility. Both Mercy, Max and Dan are well educated and smart people and feel they need to give back to their community. It's encouraging that they feel this way and this will really make a difference in children's lives. I also love that Mercy is incredibly smart and have these high ambitions and I'm sure the school will be a great success. It is going to be a lot of fun to follow the progress of the school!






Saturday, December 1, 2012

Party in Excellent school

I found myself the main person in the year end party in Excellent (with my mom). The students were singing and acting and we had a great celebration with parents, the board and of course, the kids. They gave us gifts and celebrated us in a fantastic way. I feel moved over all the wonderful and positive attention I received! 




Wednesday, November 28, 2012

How to move forward

The biggest challenge right now is really how to move forwards. To rebuild the school - all the new classrooms, I've got a quotation for 1,5 million Kes. I don't have nearly that amount of money, so I need to decide If I should do a few rooms at the time. The girls in sweden has some money, some of the other swedes living in Nairobi might have some money and I don't yet know if I'm going to get the weleda scholarship. I also need to start all the things I need to do for Christmas. I think I have to:
-get Ebba started in doing the christmas cards
-send e-mails to all my contacts
-activate the facebook page
-update the webpage
I guess that this will contribute with some money. I'm also contemplating waiting until next year, when I see the result of the christmas drive, but then again, christmas is a long break for the school and by doing it now it will be done when the students are off and will not affect their daily school work.
I also know my mother has a few contacts, so I have to ask her to get in touch with them. My dad promised me to talk to his friends that work with big companies, so I can send them a presentation of the school and might find new sponsors. I'm planning to go to the school very soon to discuss it with George. I've already had a lot of e-mail contacts with him, and asked him for new quotations.
It is really frustrating when I have so many plans, but not at all the money to go through with my plans. It is also frustrating to just wait and not really know how to solve the problem. I'm telling myself to just keep working. To wright the list above helped a little, now at least, I know where to start.


Crazy guys in the school


Teachers working in the new room




Saturday, November 24, 2012

Thinking of money... and how to get more!

OK, I'm thinking of how to raise the money to rebuild all the classrooms. I've e-mailed the girls in Sweden, I'm going to start on the Christmas drive (I'll have my sister design the christmas cards) and I've been pushing hard for the Weleda stipend on face book and still don't know if I've got it (but I doubt it, because last time I checked we were in the 10:th place with likes). Maybe it's time to mail everyone that has shown interest and ask them for money. That will, however take a lot of time and my work load in school is quite demanding. I think I will have to delegate this task to my mom and my sister. Hopefully they can help me out...  Christmas is the "time for giving" - so I can't afford to loose the opportunity. Is this showing leadership skills or is it just a way to get out of lots of work??




Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Scholarship jury is thinking...

Last week I got an e-mail from Weleda saying that the jury now is working on deciding who to give the scholarship to. I'm wondering how they will decide. I know that the number of likes on facebook was one important criteria, but hoping it is not going to be everything they go on. I managed to get over 300 likes for my project in Excellent, but some had over 1000 likes. Last year they gave the funds to an organisation working with people living on a dump in Equador. Some people I talked to think that it is unlikely to go to a foreign country again. There were lots of project about health, environmental issues and troubled kids in Sweden that applied. I'm hoping they will see that my project is much more urgent and important, but as I stated before, people tend to not allow poverty problems to get to them and find them hard to understand. I guess it's a common effect by living in a country where no one is starving and lack the possibility of getting an education. 
Now, the only thing I can do is keep my fingers crossed!
I still feel that Weleda seems to be a great company, taking their social responsibility to a high level. Only the fact that they contacted ME, a teenager in Kenya, is very impressive. I know there is a lot of company with social responsibility plans, but they all seems so hard to get to. They probably give their money to organisations that also uses them for administration. My project is not run by a big company, but by me, whit no extra costs that means that all the money goes to what they are intended for. I'm also very thorough when reporting back. I'm going to work hard on getting more companies to notice me and hope that opportunities like this comes up again.




Sunday, November 18, 2012

New teachers room

Yesterday I visited the school to look at the new teacher room. We managed to repair a room after buying so many, and fix it up as the teachers room. Previously, they had nowhere to grade their papers and prepare for their classes. As part of the money we got from the Swedish society, we bought them desks and chairs. The problem was, that until we fixed the teachers room, there were no place to put the nice new desks. I took a lot of pictures, so now I can finalize my report to the Swedish society, and also start working on the poster that they'll need for the Christmas bazaar.







I also had a long chat with the 8:th graders who are preparing for the National exams. They felt well prepared and I'm sure they are going to do well. I had a kiss and hug party with the smaller kids and had a hard time taking photos, because my hands were occupied by smaller hands holding on to me wherever I went!






I filmed this outside the school - but many of "my kids" are playing there. It gives a feel of the area:

It is still surprising that the kids are so welcoming and happy when we get there. They live under the worst of circumstances and a few of them are sick. Many have scars from burns on their faces, arms and hands. I was told that it is easy to get burned when they have an open fire on the ground to cook food in their houses. Many of the kids are living with siblings or relatives because they are orphans and one of the big problems in Excellent is that they are always hungry. There is no food served in school and they drink water to fill their stomachs. Living under these conditions they certainly have not much to be happy about, but they truly are! This is fantastic and I think that many would learn a lot to visit the school, mainly to be thankful for what they got and put their own problems in perspective. I realised that visiting USA and Sweden during the summer, people are generally into their own problems and think they are so big. For me, it is just ridiculous to hear them complain and even when I tell them about life in Mathare they just don't get it. It is truly sad that people can't relate to an every day life that so many people in the world experiences!
It is also interesting and bit sad that all the kids spend their week-ends in school playing and studying. This is the only place they can go to to feel safe and play with each other. The streets of Mathare is really not a place to hang out so this makes it even more important to build a school area that is only for the kids!

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Doing a drama production

On yesterdays performance, I was actually glad to be an actor. I know all my lines and feel comfortable in my roles. I even felt confident enough to improvise a little (even if the director thought I took to much attention on stage, so I might have to tone it down a bit.) I also got a lot of really great comments from school friends and teachers, which makes me happy and thinking it is worth the effort. I'm comparing it ta last years experience to work back stage. There is so much to keep in mind and you really can't relax a minute during the two hours performance. Even if you're not exposed to the audience it is truly nerv wrecking to be responsible for everything that goes on back stage. As an actor, I'm able to take short breaks when I'm not on stage and as back stage crew you have to be in control all the time. I'm really thankful to all the back stage crew this year and really not envious of what they are going through. My drama teacher wanted someone of the seniors to direct the next school play, and I would really love to get that experience. But, I doubt I would be able to put in all the time and the hard work required and to train the back stage people as well as directing the cast would be extremely hard. To have the ultimate responsible of a production is something that seems quite impossible!

Tonight is my last performance and I'm looking forward to it. It feels great and at the same time a bit sad that it is over soon. Next week my life is getting back to normal, and the biggest challenge will be to catch up on everything I missed during the last couple of weeks.




Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Theatrical premiere

Today was the first day we performed Arabian nights. We are going to do one matinée and three night performances. We were all quite nervous, but it went fairly well. The audience was not really big and mainly kids from schools near by, so that felt good. Tomorrows performance will be more nervous!
My mom managed to record our warm-up on video...I'm the one with a loose headdress!

And some more images:
Art center entrance

Me and the King!


Sunday, November 11, 2012

In action

This video pretty much speaks for itself. It's me, my sister and mother in action...



Thursday, November 8, 2012

Report to the Swedish Society

One of the criteria to get funds from the Swedish society is to make a report on the results and send in the receipts. I started working on this over the break, I still need some photos for the poster I need to make for the christmas bazaar in the Swedish school in December. I will probably not have time for that    next week, because I'm really busy in school right now.   





Sunday, November 4, 2012

New project

My Tae kwondo coach is starting a school! He is going to start with the lower grades, Pre-K to 1:st grade. It's in a lower-middle income village and he is financing it all by himself. I really want to help him out and have to think about things to do to raise money, without competing with my own project in Excellent school.




Thursday, November 1, 2012

Drama, drama, drama and loads of work

We're coming in on our last two weeks of rehearsals and preparations for the production "Arabian Nights". It is taking up a lot of time and we're in rehearsals until 6 pm every day. I'm a bit worried that I can't keep up with my CAS work this coming two weeks and I'm suspecting that the drama production is going to take time during the coming week-ends as well. I'm playing five roles in the play, so I'm quite busy. There is also a lot of focus on my history IA, my drama RI, my math IA, the biologi IA, a TOK essay and presentation and last, but not least my EE. I'm doing the SAT on Saturday, and still need to organize some of my college applications. Needless to say, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment.
I know that now is the time to only focus on the next thing you need to do, but I also know that eating healthy, sleeping and exercising is important to be able to get through this stressful situation (or, thats what my parents keep telling me). There is no time to feel sorry for myself, and to be truthful I feel better that almost all the seniors are in the same situation as I am. I'm not alone!
I'm hoping I can find time for a Taekwondo class this week-end and some time to organize my work load. There is no way that I'll have the time during the coming two weeks to finalize my poster and my report for the Swedish Society. To update the web page for Excellent is also on the agenda, but that has to wait too. This is the IB program in full force!!! I hope I'll survive until the christmas break.


Sunday, October 28, 2012

Something to think about


I found this image on Facebook and it really made me think. There is always two sides to every story, and what we think is normal may not be normal at all! The way of thinking this image describes is actually so much more "normal" than our western standards and really makes sense to me. How are really the screwed-up ones?

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Vacation!

This is where I'm going to spent the next week.... Capetown in South Africa. I will have a great time! So, there will be NO BLOGPOSTS from me in a while!




Saturday, October 20, 2012

School news

Finally, we are able to buy the last room in the school area. We actually bought two others last week, but now we are able to get a school with all rooms in one block. It makes it easier to build one house for almost all of the school. This will also make it easier to fence in. The problem is that we need to raise a lot of money to rebuild the new block with proper rooms. We might be able to reuse some of the corrugated iron sheets, but we still have to cast concrete floors. almost everywhere. Some of our Swedish friends are taking care of the staff room, fixing it up so I can put the nice desks I got from the Swedish society there, but we still need to start planning for the major construction. It's going to take about a million kes, and I don't have nearly that amount. Even with the upcoming Christmas drive, I doubt that we'll be able to raise that kind of cash. I guess the solution to the problem is to build in phases, but that is quite inefficient when it's going to be cheaper to build the whole thing at one time. I guess I'll have to check with the Swedish girls how much they made so far... and maybe make an extra plea to my current donors. We will also need a few more toilets, so that will be an extra expense.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Global grant

My mother found a Swedish organisation called Global grant. Just by register your project, you get the possibility to get bou 150 000 Kes. She applied for membership and now we can search this site for companies that possibly could donate money to Excellent Care center and school. By becoming a member, the project also will be displayed in their registry, for interested companies to see.
I haven't had the time to go in and search it thoroughly, but will do that very soon.
It is fascinating that if you just search the net a bit, you'll find lots of great opportunities and new ways of forming alliances. I just wish I had the time right now to do a more thorough search and find more good opportunities - I'm inspired right now!


Sunday, October 14, 2012

Goals To Go 2012

Me and two other friends participated in the ISK organised friendly tournament Goals To Go. The money would all go to Shangalia school (I think that was the name)

As part of the guidelines for the tournament, a group of three were to be combined with another group of the same size. I paired up with Eben and Mathew from 11th and 10th grade respectively, and we were combined with a very young group from the Shangalia school. These children were between 5 to 17 so there was a huge mix. However each of the had more technical talent than I could ever imagine and so it became very fun to play. I did my best to ensure that everyone I played with or against felt welcomed and confident of playing. It did become hard on occasions, especially when I was fouled several times but it is all part of the game. Despite captaining the loosing side, and myself missing a penalty which eliminated us from the tournament, my group felt happy of being able to play with such a big group with huge potential. Ms Houriez later told me that I should win the Fairest Player Award (if there was one) but I believe that my type of conduct today was something all athletes should strive for, as a game can not be enjoyable without sportsmanship or respect for your opponents.

I wish the tournament was better organised but I can understand the problems they encountered because not all people who signed up actually came to the event. However, we shared laughs with so many new people and I particularly enjoyed playing football again since I have not had the time to play the game.


Planning with Ebba

My sister, Ebba who is in 7:th grade wants to help out with Excellent. I had a plan to make a photo collage for the school because the kids love to see themselves on photos and this is a project that would be great for her. Christmas will be coming up soon, so she can design the new Christmas cards and help me sell them. She can also take over my responsibilities with the Swedish Society (I know they always need help, and she's been helping out before).
My mom thought it would be a great idea if she applied for money from them next year. I was planning to do that, even if my CAS work will be done by them, but I guess it's only fair to let her do it if she's doing all the work I did last year.
I was also thinking that she could help mom and her friend with informing about the menstrual things, but I don't know if she is too young for that.... I will think about it and decide later.
I think this is enough work for her for now, even though she wanted more.

Ebba in the school

Friday, October 12, 2012

Goals 2 Go

I've signed up for the charity "Goals 2 Go". The fee is 1000 Kes per team of three players and we'll be paired with another team of three, to play a football tournament. The whole tournament take place in october and all the fees are going to charity. I'm looking forward to a fun day, and it's going to be interesting to see how we can do with totally unknown team players.



Thursday, October 11, 2012

And after a while.


We had 84 likes! That's something to like! After not so long we were on third place and got a spot on the frontpage. Keep on liking and maybe we will be in second place soon. The number one application has over at 1000 likes... hard to catch up, but we might not have to be in first place to be considered for the money!



Wednesday, October 10, 2012

More social media stuff...

I just realised that to get the Weleda stipend, It needs to be "liked" in facebook as many times as possible. That means that I have to e-mail and facebook all my friends to like the page on facebook. I sent a group mail with about 40 recipients, asking them to help me by liking the project on facebook. I got 25 within 2 hours, so I'm hoping it will improve. The problem is that the webpage is in Swedish, and most of my friends are english speaking. I'll se how it goes and translate the page for my international friends, so they can like it. I noticed on Facebook, that this is what my god mother, Birgitta, who lives in England did. I'm currently in 6:th place and I'm hoping I'm bumped up over time. So, anyone reading this go to the weleda page: http://stipendium.weleda.se/ansokningar/excellent-school-i-mathare-slummen-nairobi and "like" the fb icon UNDER my image! Thank you in advance!

See the little facebook icon above - that's were to like it!

Monday, October 8, 2012

Trying Judo

My sister needed someone to do some Judo training with, so I joined her for a class. It was quite hard, and it's clear that she has a blue belt! She was throwing me around with great skill. I have to say it was a challenge, but I think I could do well if I trained it some more. It was very technical and tough. You really have to use your whole body! I also think it would help with MMA training. To get your opponent down with a good throw and then do ground fighting is really what MMA is about. Then add some punches on that and you're done... Sadly, I usually have tutoring on mondays so I think I'll have a hard time to fit it in to my schedule. I'll have to wait and see and take all the opportunities I can to try it again.


Saturday, October 6, 2012

Having fun

The kids in the school are so sweet, loving and happy! My mom lost half her hair while letting the kids touch it. Lots of hugs today! We even got to visit during a kiswahili class. One girl was reading aloud from the blackboard and we were following!

I also met a few guys outside the school. They wanted money and my watch. I asked them why they were not in school and one of them answered "I don't want to". I told him that he looked like a clever guy, and that going to school was the smart thing. Maybe, he would become the future president of Kenya if he just went to school. He looked happy and we parted in a much more positive way. My heart was breaking when the other guy said his mom couldn't afford the school fees.

It is still quite shocking to know that some kids in Nairobi is still still not in school, even though it is mandatory. The recent article in the daily nation that i wrote about a month ago, telling us that parents could be sent to prison if not sending their kids to school seems to not have made an impact on the Mathare parents. The caregivers in the area are often not the parents, because many people die from Aids and other diseases in the slums. Children are often brought up by relatives, siblings and even neighbours. 



Weleda information and application



I was going crazy while trying to submit my application on the internet. Nothing was working and it got later and later. I think I wrote it about ten times, but nooooo - it was not accepted. Finally I just deleted a whole paragraph, because I was almost panicking. How can the internet be such a good help and such a nuisance at the same time?? Ours has been very good recently. After having severe problems during 3,5 years, dad switched to fiber. It's been fantastic generally, but as soon as you need to do something really important it fails! Internet is provided at high speed in big cities all over the world nowadays, so saying that it's down or that you have a poor connection is almost not believed in. I've had this problem many times, trying to skype with friends around the world or while trying to stream a tv show. It is just not understood that the line is down or the connection is poor! Another reflection concerning this is: Why do we get so frustrated and irritated? It's not that you could change anything, so why get upset about it?

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Fantastic mail

I can't believe it! I recieved a mail tonight from a company in Sweden called Weleda. They wanted me to apply for a scholarship of about 200 000 Kes from them. I have no idea how they got my name or mail adress, but I'm incredibly happy and excited. It is so encouraging that a company operating in Sweden takes the time to send me an e-mail, asking me to apply for this. Of course I did it right away. I had some problems though, My application was to long and I couldn't submit it. Finally i erased the conclusion section... maybe not a good idea. However, I'm sure that they will look at the web page or this blog to obtain more information. After all, they took the time to e-mail me, so I truly believe this fantastic company will take the time to learn more about my project. From now on, I'm only going to buy Weleda products. They are my new heroes! Keep your fingers crossed that my application will reach them and that I was able to communicate the idea with my involvement with Excellent Care center and school!

Translation of the e-mail:

Hello Emil!

My name is Linda and working with Weleda and Weledastipendiet - a scholarship for sustainable utveckling. The scholarship was established last year and is awarded to an idea or a project that aims to improve everyday life or the future of people with various difficulties. Last year the scholarship was awarded to the project Dump tees that works to transform the lives of young boys who live at the dump La Chureca in Nicaragua.

We have noticed your project Excellent Care Center and School, and think it would be a very good candidate for the scholarship and therefore we urge you to look!

Unlike many other types of grants are you looking Weledastipendiet online, your contribution is public for all and so you can also use your application to get extra attention for your project. The scholarship consists of SEK 20 000 and the application period started on Monday. Visit stipendium.weleda.se for more information or go directly to the application page on stipendium.weleda.se / leave the funding to add your contribution. The jury Carlos Rojas, last year's scholarship Patrik Appelquist, Cathrine Westerlind from Åhléns sustainability department and representatives from Weleda.

Please contact us if you have any questions or comments!

Sincerely,
Linda Bogren Ericsson
commissioned by Weleda