The School

The NVC School Rusinga is for students from 11 till 18 years of age. It will offer a multiple learning environments. Of course, students will learn the secondary school curriculum subjects, however, besides this and arguably as important, they will be introduced to the Nonviolent Communication modality, which will help them to communicate and cooperate in a way that respects equality and connection. This supports the learners to make changes and build their own futures: peaceful, independent, self-supportive and sustainable.

The School participates in the international campaign “Learning without Fear”. And it will provide all facilities that help students to learn, feel safe, and create a harmonious learning environment. See the List of facilities the school provides:

Spacious and manageable classrooms
Well-equipped science and computers laboratory
Well-stocked Library
Sports including athletics, ball games
Performing arts such as music and drama
Multipurpose Hall/Kitchen
Balanced meals
Clean toilets
Housing for pregnant students
Permaculture garden

Since this school does not fit the traditional model of schools in Rusinga, it is an aim to engage the older students in different professional empowerment projects; such as assisting with the building of the school itself. This will give the students the opportunity to learn construction in a sustainable way, which will boost their skills and chances of making a living and also housing for themselves one day. Agricultural education will take place in the gardens of the School, this will teach the students how to provide their own food in the local environment.

Sketch of the school building – aerial view

Why

Urgent need to improve education in Kenya amidst overcrowding and outdated teaching methods

Why is the NVC School needed? School education in Kenya often has overcrowded classrooms which lack vital materials and equipment.

Teaching methods are often outdated and not suited to children; violent teaching methods are commonplace in many schools. Poor supervision due to the lack of teachers leads to a high school dropout rate, and in 2020 the situation became worse due to Covid 19.

From all those experiences of violence, punishment, and poverty, as the short stories of Auma, Erick, and Oketh illustrate below, there are limited opportunities for a good education in Rusinga. Social change is required to address this situation.

Social change begins with education and awareness. The NVC School Rusinga will offer this by creating a learning ground where students can overcome trauma and violence and learn with curiosity and joy through creative expression and Nonviolent Communication both at home and in school. In NVC School Rusinga the students will find surroundings where they may grow in peace and freedom, and learn how to create peaceful relationships.

For Whom

Who would have benefited from a school such as NVC Rusinga?

If we imagine Erick and Oketch had attended this school, they presumably would not have dropped out because of the physical punishments. If Auma had had a place where she was safe to give birth to her child and finish school, her future would not have been so difficult. Imagine Aasir was their teacher. The whole community would have profited! And Rozy would have regained her independence as a mother and woman.

Oketch
Erick
Auma
Aasir
Rozy

One day Oketch had to sit on his knees for 6 hours following bad results; his chemistry teacher gave him the punishment. “I never attended chemistry classes again. I’m quite sure that due to this culture of punishments, I performed poorly at school. I finally dropped out because we couldn’t pay the school fees”

Erick also stopped going to school because of the punishments. “When I made mistakes in maths I got punished. And I noticed I got punished differently than others, more severely. This was the limit. I left.”

Auma has lived with her grandmother since her parents died of HIV. Her grandmother was impaired so she had to be the breadwinner. The most economical local activity is fishing, but she was unable to fish. The solution that many local women find for this problem is to exchange sex for fish, so she has the means to feed herself and her grandmother. At the age of 14 she got pregnant. Following the birth of her child she went back to school. The teachers blamed her, and fellow students looked down at her. Being humiliated and isolated, she dropped out of school completely and disappeared from her community, out of fear of the local authority who told her it was unlawful to have sex at her age (14 at the time). No one knows where she is now.

Aasir, who is a teacher by profession and a social scientist is strongly motivated to join this initiative. In his view, the school will enhance social change and break the pattern of violence and oppression: “When the learners have the opportunity to dialogue, to be welcome regardless of who they are or how much money they have, they will stay in school and develop skills and equipment to make a change and build their own future, equal, sustainable and inclusive.” Not only will the learner’s profit from the school, the community as a whole will as well, he believes: “The school will give light to the Rusinga community! The locals will be involved in the school: they will help build it, later they can serve as cooks or sell their agricultural products to the school for example.”

Rozy married as a teenager in Rusinga: “That was the best option for me since there was a lack of school fee.” In her marriage, she faces multiple challenges and she finds herself depending on her husband for food and clothing for her and her child. “That’s why I really would like to go back to school as a way to regain my independence and not to depend on my husband. I feel like then I can be someone and afford my own life.” 

Where

Rusinga Island: A Community in Need of Education and Transformation

Rusinga Island is in Southern Nyanza Province, a part of the Mbita Sub County of Homabay County. It is an island in Lake Victoria and is approximately 80 sq. kms. The island’s population is approximately 37,000, according to the recent population census of 2019.

Rusinga has been in decline in recent years due to deforestation, habitual degradation due to sand mining, overfishing, poor waste management, poverty and food insecurity, drought, mono cropping and depletion of fish stock in the lake. It has a poverty index of 74% where a minority of the population is living in deplorable standards since they earn less than a $1 a day.

Education in the Rusinga Area is poor: there is one high school in which the old suppressive culture dominates the school system. Professional provision of education is nonexistent.

The buildings are planned to be build during 2023, so that we can welcome the first students in January 2024.

Many things have been realised already and there are many things to be done before we can welcome our first students. If you want to learn more, look here.

How

With no punishments and no power structures NVC School Rusinga will be a unique school.

No other education centre in Kenya has Nonviolent Communication (NVC) at its core. This way of communication safeguards that everyone, students and teachers, matters equally. In daily school life this means that the teachers create an empathic and a non – threatening collaboration with the students. By doing so they stimulate the development of self-esteem, emotional competence, and skills in order to contribute to social change. 

The founding team believes that students are best motivated by dialogue and aims to seek each young person’s spirit of independence and intellectual curiosity, together with a strong understanding of personal and collective responsibility. This raises their confidence, their skills to create a safe interaction and makes them fit to make their own choices and be lifelong learners. This is how they can build their future: interdependent and peaceful.

NVC is a communication consciousness that is brought together by the American psychologist Dr Marshall Rosenberg. As a young boy with a Jewish name he grew up in the midst of the race riots in Detroit, USA in the Sixties. He started to wonder why some people became violent while others, on the contrary, were compassionate and could tune in to the humanity of the other? This question never left him. Following his psychology studies,  he worked for some time as a ‘regular’ therapist which led to him to develop his own methodology. This was the birth of NVC: a way of communicating that respects every human being, their feelings and needs and their longing to connect, for equality and for growth.

Your Giving Helps

A sustainable school
A school system based on respect and equality
A safe space for youngsters, especially pregnant teenagers
A surrounding community that profits from the social change

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