Infinite Family and a bit more...

"A school is a building that has four walls with tomorrow inside."
Lon Watters

We have received 27 new children this term but this was only because we had no desks to take in any more children. We have not yet closed the admission process and hope that once we have a few more desks and have fixed missing doors on three classrooms, we can be able to admit a few more deserving children to join school.

UJS has formally completed the Infinite Family(http://www.infinitefamily.org/) Partnership Preliminary survey form and are looking forward to a favorale response from the founding director after they would have assessed our application. INFINITE FAMILY inspires and motivates teens and pre-teens with very limited resources or support networks in South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, enabling them to build the confidence, skills and global perspective that promote success. are dedicated to providing long-term impact, using weekly video conver-sations to establish enduring relationships between adult mentors and vulnerable teens. We will need a computer lab at Upendo if the project has to take off! Other local schools and have shown lots of interest in the hoped for mentoring program should we be successful.

It is now official: the trip to UK is on. Both the Director and the Ag.Headteacher, Mr. Emmanuel Wasike, will be visiting the UK this April thanks to funding funding by the DFiD through the British Council under the Curriculum Development Grant. According to the invitations from Mrs Sally Bates, the headteacher at Wadsworth Fields Primary School, the work undertaken while the UJS pair will be in UK will hep develop a greater understanding of each other's way of life and needs. This will include discovering differences and similarties of climate and how that affects us. It is hoped that the ongoing development of communication links through ICT will allow us to get to know so much more about one another. Lesson plans can be shared, languages learned and the Kenyan aspect of Wadsworth Fields website further developed. Emmanuel will have a hands-on experience of how to use computers in teaching during the visit. Our joint curriculum project was agreed upon during the reciprocal visits last year and is twin-pronged. We wish to enhance the teaching of Science through ICT and shared practical activities. From a global citizenship perspective, we hope to improve communication between learners and members of staff in both schools and hence enhance our cross-cultural awareness.

Dr. Masibo will be meeting Councillor Stan Heptinstall of Broxtowe Borough, the local MP and will also visit the School of English Studies, the University of Nottingham. This will be part of the partnership's endeavour to bring on board members of the local community so that they can support the partnership once the DFiD funding of reciprocal visits comes to an end in a year's time.

Mr Terry Maxwell is organizing a paid for Jazz event at Bonnington which hopefully will be graced by none other than the Jazz Maestro Gilad! The two visitors hope to visit the proposed venue of the event and to talk with Gilad on why this event will be important in helping us achieve our desire to expand the school and offer education to more children in Kiminini.

There is certainly light at the end of the tunnel!