International Public Health Initiative School/Orphanage Project

The quickest and most inexpensive procedure to address this problem, as a short-term plan, is to partner with local churches both inside and outside the Kibera slum and use their spaces during weekdays as classrooms to educate multiple small groups of orphans. Financial budget mainly devotes to pay for teachers, which is from $20 to $25 per month for each person, and daily meals for students that cost less than $1 per day for each student. However, there have been several cases that the classrooms had to be closed, because people from church dispute one another regarding the management of school after the school budget was established. The next inexpensive path is to build semi-permanent public classrooms and the orphanage altogether inside Kibera. For 80 ~ 100 orphans, the cost is approximately $50,000 to acquire vacant spaces by demolishing several houses in the slum, establish buildings within a month, and set up main resources, such as water tank and food, to be self-sustainable. However, as the government owns the whole Kibera land, it has authority to remove the whole buildings out of Kibera. In addition, school security would not be guaranteed. The most expensive and long-term plan is to build permanent public classrooms in Ngong or Rongai, areas outside Nairobi, nearby previously established orphanages at walking distance. Kibera orphans would be moved out of the slum indefinitely and reside in these areas to attend school in days while sleeping in orphanages at night. Before building a school, the cost to purchase and obtain the land is approximately $20,000 per acre, and building permanent classrooms themselves cost more than $50,000. However, the school is easier to expand in areas outside Nairobi, for the population density significantly drops, and admit more students as the financial budget grows. In the future, as long as financially allowed, the foundation could be established in order to provide scholarships and grants for promising students to attend colleges, even international universities outside Kenya, for higher education. Free education for those orphans will enable them to prevent them from drug abuse and sex trade, realize their capabilities to improve the communities in which they once lived, and become responsible citizens with an opportunity to leave their legacies.