College Application Workshop, Miale Award Ceremony, and New Paint Job

Last week CoKF completed a successful college application workshop with their high school scholars. Through out the four days of meetings, the students went over how to apply to both Kenyan and American schools and receiving financial aid. Each student wrote at least four drafts of an essay answering the question ‘Who are you?’ through a story. Many essays tended to include events from the 2007 election violence; being accepted into the CoKF scholars program; or basic tales of life in Kibera.

The workshop also covered interview skills, concluding with interns Drew and Brendan conducting individual interviews. The overall general feedback was great job answering the questions, but speak up! Everyone also made individual resolutions of joining another extra curricular and continuing to do well academically next term. By the end of the week, the university mystery seemed a bit less daunting and a lot more inviting.

Miale, another organization based in Kibera, kindly invited the high school scholars and CoKF staff to attend their end of break arts festival and awards ceremony. The event took place in the courtyard of the Miale campus, where they preformed dances, sang songs, presented artwork, and even had a fashion show. CoKF scholars were asked to be the judges of each event, and chose the top three in each category to receive prizes.

After the performances, four of the high school scholars gave motivational speeches to the Miale students on the importance of education. “We are all human, we all have the same capacity to think. Just because we are from Kibera does not mean we cannot do as well as those from the posh areas of Kenya”. After that, the Miale students vowed to do better next term, much to everyone’s enjoyment.

Throughout the many events of the past couple of weeks, a few painters have been hard at work preparing Red Rose for yet another term. The entire upper campus received a new paint job, and bookshelves were built for the library.