A very cool girl

One of the girls I'm working with for Excellent (the IB girls raising money in Sweden), is way cool. She managed to do a big demonstration against racism in her hometown. Apparently there were some racist people that showed up there and got their point across. She reacted instantly and was holding a rally on the 25:th. This is really impressive, and even more impressive is that she got articles in the paper and air-time on the radio, spreading the word by interviewing her.
With people like this working to raise funds for Excellent, I can't be anything else but happy and deeply impressed! The title of the article below is "The angry and the brave". She was also interviewed by a Swedish evening news show. Find the link below. My friend is the one on the right. We sent her and her friend two CD's with films, images and information on the school, to help them in their work in Sweden. Hopefully they can come down to Kenya soon. I would love to give them a tour of the school! It makes me full of hope to know that there are people like this in Sweden. I'm sure she will be a strong future leader and will do anything to support her in her future.

http://www.svtplay.se/video/255190/25-8-19-30

Movie for the website

I found this fantastic movie about schools in Mathare. Of course Excellent was one of them! I managed to download it and edit it so it only shows Excellent. I'm quite happy with the result!

Start of drama rehearsals

The first to rehearsals of “Arabian Nights” has gone well. There are a lot of young and excited talents along with the more senior and more experienced students that will perform in a very basic, yet difficult structured play. Every actor has several roles and it will be a challenge for each one of us to switch characters in a short time. So far, we are reading through the stories, while learning each others voices, tones and approach to the text as well as how we feel together as a group. The opening rehearsals has been very good and everyone is enjoying it. The task at hand for each individual will be to learn hair lines. Although this can be quite easy after several read throughs, I feel that we need to pay attention to this. Most of us are in the IB program and we all have many academic demands and plenty to study. It will be tough, but I know we are going to be rewarded.

Funded by me progress

Some progress in the Funded by me account. I now have raised about 20.000 Kes and I hope there is more to come...

New education law

My dad brought home the Daily Nation because he thought this article might interest me. He was right. I'm however still not sure how they are going to enforce this law. I'm still hopeful that this might get some attention to the problem, even though I know that police are so corruptive in this country, so they are probably just going to get people to bribe them to not send them to jail. After living in this country for three years it is sometimes hard or almost impossible to believe that the laws will be enforced.

Training, training and training

I've had two taekwondo sessions and one personal training hour in the gym last week. It is interesting how hard it is to get back into shape after the summer. I'm in pain! The taekwondo classes has been a lot of fun. Today we were shadow sparring and it was great. I accidentally kicked my mom really hard but she kicked back! Tomorrow I'm going to try MMA. Mixed Martial Arts is really tough. When they are competing they usually do it in a cage. My mom thinks that I'm going to like it - lots of taekwondo kicks and then add punches, elbows and wrestling. It's going to be very interesting...

The more the merrier

I had a discussion with my CAS coordinator who seemed to like the work I'm doing with Excellent school. She encouraged me to ask for help from other kids in school, because all the new kids doesn't really have a strategy on how to fulfil their CAS requirements. I think this is a good idea and have already started to pitch my project for some of them.
I also contacted an old friend from Sweden, and she got very inspired from all the information I sent her. She promised to start working on her friends and relatives to help me raise funds for the school.

Facebook messages, e-mails and strategies

I've re-posted the  funded by me project on facebook.  As I was working, I realized that I need to update both people who has given me funds and people who has shown interest, so they will give me money. In the end I wrote about 10 e-mails and spent a whole day working with fund raising for Excellent. It is hard work and many of the people I mailed has not even answered. It feels really sad that it is so hard to find interested people sometimes. I think that it is hard for people to realize and understand how a day in the Mathare slums look like because if they did I'm sure they would give me some money. I'm doing my best to educate them, but some are not even interested... What world do we live in when people only think of themselves and the ones close to them? Why can't they open their hearts and minds for the bigger picture? Or just send me an e-mail replying that they are not interested?
I'm aslo thinking about contacting big Swedish companies, for sponsring. Money would be good, but there are some products that we need as well...... need to think more and develop some kind of strategy.  My uncle gave me some tips on how to proceed and new ideas on people to contact. I have to keep on working hard. It is like everything you do needs to be redone often. I will keep you posted!

And some money turned up!

I got around 7000 Kes from the Funded by me project. The funny thing is that one of the donors is totally unknown to me. I am, however, very grateful for the money. Next time I start a funded by me project, I think I need to push it much harder on facebook. It is very clear that social media is extremely fast and that news are old after a few minutes. I might ask friends to share this project again on facebook. I'm happy that I made so much money so quickly, but after this I haven't received any more money.

Summer projects

Going to other countries gives a great opportunity to market my Cas projects. During the summer I had many meetings with people who has shown interest in supporting my work in Excellent school. I also managed to meet some of the people who already are sponsors and tell them about the progress.
I invited two parties to Kenya for a visit in the school, guided by me. It was also fantastic to have a meeting with the IB students in Bollnas, Sweden who also are working to help the school. They were really cool people and very enthusiastic about the project. I'm sure they will do a fantastic job and it's clear that it goes beyond their Cas requirements.
Doing this inspired me to take a day to inform people by e-mail, both previous donors and other people who has shown interest. I also spent a lot of time thinking about approaching companies and googling how to get in contact with the right persons.
By discussing my project with family friends and relatives I got many new ideas on how to do some marketing and spreading my project further than to my immediate social group and I need to do some further investigations and planning to make this happen. I just hope the internet is not going to fail me because I realize that internet is going to be important for this to succeed. 
I've also managed to persuade my father to help spreading information about Excellent in his, really big, networks. However, he wants me to further investigate the owner conditions and more about how the school is organized. After buying so many rooms it's only fair to clear up who are holding the deeds to these rooms and what would happen in a "worst case senario". My dad thinks these are questions I should be able to answer and I have to agree with him.
I also hope that new ways of communicating my project will help me with my creativity cas hours, because I need more of those according to my Cas coordinator. I really want to focus my cas work this year on Excellent school and my Taekwondo, so I rather not start any new creativity projects.
I've had continuos e-mail contacts with reverend George. He still has a problem moving the last person out of the school area. Be both agree, however, that time and patience will solve this problem.

Leaving this:

to go back to this:

New creativity project

The article in the Daily Industry paper gave me an idea for a new creativity project. The people mailing me about our project in Excellent school, made me realize that I need a web page to inform both them about our work as well as posting news and progresses to our donors. I ended up referring them to this blog, and I'm sure they are not so interested in my other CAS projects, so I felt a bit unprofessional! I filled out the CAS proposal form, but I need to check this with my coordinator. I hope she will accept the project because I clearly stated that I want to focus on Excellent school this year!
If she doesn't I might create a web site anyway. It would make my job much easier! The big problem in the senior year is.... time! I still need another creativity project, so combining this with my service in the school and my Taekwondo project would be fantastic!

Funded by me

Lots of nice stuff has happened over the summer. I got a tip from a friend about "funded by me". This is a web page that you an post on your facebook page to fund projects. I'm asking all my friends and relatives to like it and share it. I incuded the i-movie I made and I'm hoping it's going to give me some results!