During this International Day of Education, Jabulani Youths for Transformation is glad to announce our collaboration with Nolali wase Dolophini to promote literacy for children and youth in Kisumu County, Kenya, and in Eastern Cape, South Africa. Nolali wase Dolophini is a Xhosa Phrase with the direct translation “a villager from town”.  Nolali wase Dolophini Book Club aims to bridge the rural – peri-urban – urban literacy divide and ultimately the rural – peri-urban – urban education divide. 

The Book Club is open thrice weekly to young people between the age of 6 and 15 years.  Through our collaboration, we will bring together young people from both organizations once every month virtually for knowledge sharing between the young people, cross-cultural and cross-continental learning, and monitoring and evaluation.

Access to quality education improves the learning capabilities of young people. Unfortunately, some homeless children and children living in low-income communities in Kisum still experience the challenge around education by lacking access to learning materials, learning infrastructure, and sufficient attention from tutors due to the big student-teacher ratio. According to the research by Maoulidi, Moumie. (2008). EDUCATION NEEDS ASSESSMENT FOR KISUMU CITY, KENYA, National and local authorities must also address issues of quality by training teachers and must enhance equity by targeting vulnerable groups such as girls and poor children. 

We are continuously building synergies with private companies, civil society organizations, and government agencies to collaboratively narrow the gaps in access to quality education for children in Kisumu. This is in line with our objective of fostering positive youth development.