Shika

For the past week or so I have been spending more time than previously on Shika, that charity that many of you donated money to in the spring.
Hopefully I explained it well at the time, but if not, Shika (to hold) is a charity set up by a women in Brighton who used to live here, for vulnerable children. It is an after school centre that is meant to provide some food, education, emotional support and fun for the children most in need.

The last part raises several questions, two being, who is most in need, and how do you find them, and what are they in need of? These are the questions that we have been trying to answer this week.

Who is most in need? That's a difficult one as obviously there are many people in need. Probably the most in need would be those children who aren't attending any school at all, but that raises the obstacle of how you find and identify those children, so we have had to start in a school.
We took the whole register of class one and two and narrowed in down in several ways. The teachers identified those who are either single or double orphans and we added them to the list, we chose those who are getting the lowest grades in the two classes as that is an indicator that even if there are no further problems, there is further need for educational help and obviously it is an indicator that there may be underlying issues. Also we asked the teachers generally about the children, who misbehaves, who is very quiet, who are very poorly turned out etc etc. So from these 3 sources we had a longlist of children to interview.

Stage 2 was talking to each of the children in the school. I did half of these interviews (about 30) with Edward (the Maasai teacher from Shika) translating for me. Questions asked would range from 'what is your favourite subject' and 'what do you want to be when you leave school' (my favourite reply to that being 'President') to 'do you live with both your parents' and 'is there anyone at home when you get back from school'.
Varying answers to these questions meant we could further narrow it down to a shortlist, though not much narrowing was done. Hopefully this is because the first stage was successful in identifying those children who need our help most, rather than an indication that the majority of children at that school need our help.

Stage 3 was home visits. For each of the children on the list we have sent home a letter to their parents informing them that some visitors from the school would visit them the next day, and could they please be at home to facilitate this. This is obviously a big ask when you have a job and several mouths to feed, so the number of parents who did do this was overwhelming. We didn't want to specify who we were and what Shika does, as it is not unheard of for parents to borrow a neighbours house in order to appear to be in a worse situation than they actually are, and also because we can't offer the support to all the children and to have the idea of support that never actually materialises is not good.
So for the past two days and tomorrow we have been doing these visits. It involves me and Edward and a teacher from the school traipsing around town with several children in tow. I didn't realise that the children would come with us, but addresses don't exist in the same way as they do at home, so we wouldn't actually be able to find the houses otherwise. It did mean the children being out of school for the whole day though, which no one seems to think is an issue.
The school has been amazingly cooperative, which several teachers giving up a lot of their time, and one in particular, Sarah devoting the whole week to us. She is a pretty amazing women in general.
The home visits were obviously something entirely new to me, and very far outside my comfort zone. People here are generally very welcoming and pleased to see you, and pleased that you are taking an interest in them, but the subject matter of the visits was very personal and at times upsetting. This meant that whilst no one became aggressive or unhelpful, it could become awkward and upsetting for everyone.
Some of the stories are really heartbreaking, as you can imagine. Some people have so little yet still manage to survive day to day. Hopefully the centre will make a tangible difference to the children and also their families.

The second question was, what are they in need of. It is easy when doing these visits to get caught up in comparing the wealth and living conditions of each (do they have electricity, do they have water, are they all living in one room) etc, but then you also have to consider who Shika is there to help, and it is not just those living in poverty. We are also trying to provide a basic level of education, so even the children who had apparently better home lives than others, but were attaining very poor grades are those that we want to help.

So the final question, and the one we haven't yet answered, is how do we run the centre in terms of addressing those needs. Do we have different children on different days who have differing needs, such as those who are falling behind at school on one day, and those who are likely to need more emotional care on another, or split them by school class and see to individual needs as they arise.

So that is what I have been up to. Quite a learning curve and definitely an eye opener. It's a great time to be here in the initially stages to be able to help set it up and have an important role to play, rather than merely volunteering at an existing centre. There are no other volunteers here at the moment, so it is quite full on.
Very glad I came here.