Matasia Primary School Sees Rise in Test Scores!

Great News! Rose  Chege, Organizing Fellow with Tatua Kenya just got a very exciting phone call From Josephat the head teacher at Matasia Primary School. The school just received their KCPE marks and the average score raised from last year. He was sure that the increase was a result of Tatua’s Campaign to improve relationships between teachers and parents. We are so excited.

in Kenya, the KCPE result is a score that evaluates your overall primary school learning and directly affects where you attend Secondary School. This increase in access to secondary education for the students will impact the well being of the entire town.

We are celebrating the immediate benefits of our work and looking forward to seeing how these students are going to raise the standards for those to come in the future. Just another example how community based change extends far past an individual.

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Update: Leadership Teams Come Together for Celebration and Reflection

Our 2013 Leadership Teams came together to celebrate their work in their communities and to reflect on the next steps for their strategies in the campaigns.

Kenneth Chomba, Tatua Kenya Co-Founder and Field Manager, nominated Natalie for NOI’s Most Valuable Organiser. Read what Ken has to say about Natalie below and then vote for for her work with Tatua by clicking on the link and “liking” the page.

VOTE HERE: http://rootscamp.neworganizing.com/awards/2013/mvo/entry/natalie-finstad/

Reflect :: Surviving Tragedy with Community

Rose Chege, Tatua Community Organizer in Ngong, shares about life after the Westgate tragedy.

It has been hard, just trying to grasp all that has been happening. The Westgate incident showed me that sometimes, it’s so hard to not know what really is happening, having 100 different stories from 100 different sources. I have decided to take each day at a time, because you really can never know exactly what will happen.

This has been much easier because of my partner Jacob. Jacob will call me occasionally to share his ideas and we can then float ideas and thoughts about things back and forth. This partnership was especially uplifting to me in this hard time.

Tips for Tatua :: Single Vision

Jacob Okumu, Tatua Organiser shares his thoughts on the importance of keeping a single vision. 

Rose Chege, Tatua Organizer, speaks to 150 people who attended the launch of the Ngong Campaign.

We have been working to form cell groups of parents that will come together with the purpose of discussing the importance of education and the goal of getting 40 kids back to school. Building these cells has been a challenging process, some members have been primarily focused on getting numbers so they went out to recruit already established community self-help groups to our work. They thought we could reconstruct them to focus on our community cell groups.

However, I’ve noticed a challenge of convincing the already established group with their own vision to adopt our goal. It is so important to have one vision, one core shared purpose that brings your team together if you are to be successful. Thankfully we have been able to either rebuild some of them or bring over some team members and form new groups, here is a photo from our recent launch in which 150 people turned out. Everyone who attended committed to joining a cell groups focused on education and getting four kids to back to school.

Natalie Finstad, Executive Director of Tatua Kenya, visits the Ngong Campaign Launch.

Do you agree with Jacob’s assessment on the importance of a single vision? Have you ever had a challenge with keeping your group focused on one single purpose? How did you respond in that challenge?