Adult

Though we have been offering Adult Education courses since 2002, we held a community meeting at the end of May 2009 to find ways to revitlize the program. The meeting was lead by Janet Maganga (below left) of the Ministry of Adult Education and Mohamed Pwani, a Takaungu community leader to understand how many people were interested and discuss what the community would like to see in an Adult Education program. At least 20 community members attended this meeting and tentatively registered. We were able to move forward and work with the Ministry to assign a full-time specially trained teacher who could teach a class of adults with varying education levels.

After heavily promoting the start of our classes with the help of our Community Health Workers and by posting signs throughout the community and handing out flyers, we began a new round of adult education classes on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 where we held an orientation and registration session.

Focusing on Math, Reading, Writing and Language Skills, classes officially began on Monday, July 6. Within one week, we had registered a total of 100+ students of varying levels! For every 50 students we have registered and in attendance, the Ministry of Adult Education provides 1 teacher free of cost!

As the EAC evolves, we see that these public-private partnerships with local government offices as being the way forward to providing truly long-lasting and sustainable services.

Women's Education

Nearly 90% of the students in our adult education classes are women. The EAC is empowering women and their families by helping them learn to read and develop basic math and business skills to help them advance economically. Most of the students in our adult education program are women who never attended primary school or left before they learned how to read.

Our adult education class is offered free of charge four days a week, two hours a day. Our program uses books provided by the Kenyan government's adult education department. Representatives from the government, including the Coast region's Director of Adult Education, have visited the school and lauded our program.

Why women's education is so important

Women's education is crucial to the empowerment of women and children and essential to the eradication of extreme poverty. According to the United Nation's Millenium Project:

• If a girl is educated for six years or more, her childbirth survival rates will dramatically improve.
• Educated mothers immunize their children 50 percent more often than mothers who are not educated.
• AIDS spreads twice as quickly among uneducated girls than among girls that have even some schooling.
• The children of a woman with five years of primary school education have a survival rate 40 percent higher than children of women with no education.