Kibwezi Educational Centre
02°24′59″S 37°58′00″E / 2.41639°S 37.96667°E
Since 1983, the Presbyterian Church of East Africa and Burke Presbyterian Church, PCUSA, have worked together to build a partnership in the town of Kibwezi, Kenya. This historical location is were in 1891 the first three Scottish missionaries came to Kenya, and where two died as a result of malaria. Today Kenya has four million Presbyterians, that is about equal to the number in the United States of America. That is the historical significance to why an international partnership was formed in a remote bush town half way between Nairobi and Mombasa.
The campus contains a polytechnic offing two-year vocational programs in carpentry, masonry, welding, and tailoring. There is also a secretarial department which requires students to have graduated from secondary school. Finally, a primary school and preschool exist for grades one though eight. Scholarships are available for need based students. Such is the case for orphans. There are currently around thirty children in the greater Kibwezi area supported and sometimes under scholarship for educational costs.
Harambee
Harambee is Swahili for "working together". To maintain a close connection, Burke Presbyterian Church sends a work camp to Kiwebzi every three years. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of when the first work camp traveled to Kibwezi. Typically the demographics of each group is approximately fifteen adults and ten adults. In 2008, a leadership team of eight adults is traveling to Kibwezi to evaluate the past twenty years of work camp partnership and to develop a long term plan for the project's future. Some issues to be discuss the possibility of developing new village churches, increasing the orphan care program, and creating a micro financing system (similar to a credit union, but for small business loans) in the town of Kibwezi which will remain separate from the church and Educational Centre, and finally the delivery of six laptop computers from the One Laptop Per Child program. The next work camp is scheduled for 2009.
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For more information see The Burke Presbyterian Church's web page.[1]
References
- Photo Album BPC Workcamp to Kibwezi Kenya in 1988
- Photo Album BPC Workcamp to Kibwezi Kenya in 1993
- Kibwezi Educational Centre on Wetpaint Mostly the same content as Wikipedia, but more of a collaborative development site.
- One Laptop Per Child Tutorial