KENYA BRANCH (LAE INITIATIVE)

Immanuel Mutai Kiprono, an Aquascope Ambassador based in Kenya, has co-created Leveraging Africa's Education Initiative (LAE Initiative), which is focused on promoting an equal and inclusive education system in Africa. At first, him and his friends worked together to raise funds to pay for various expenses relating to the Kenyan education system, including: exam fees, school materials, and school uniforms. They started out by covering these costs for five local primary school students in their community. Since, they have begun working hands-on with students and providing environmental education resources to them. 

Mutai has found that the Kenyan education system is very much focused on rote memorization and learning rather than critical thinking. Additionally, most students aren’t even aware of what the Sustainable Development Goals are! To help bridge this gap, LAE has begun hosting workshops with entire classes of students on critical thinking, empowerment, life skills, and the SDGs (see images below). They have directly impacted around 100 students and have an online platform of approximately 600 youth. Aquascope holds regular meetings with Mutai to receive feedback and direction for new curriculum to develop. So far, LAE has provided print-outs of and taught Aquascope’s Sustainable Systems Series curriculum to their students. In the future, we will be supplying LAE with our environmental issues curriculum. In an effort to stimulate a fascination and respect for the natural world and science, Aquascope will also be supplying LAE with Foldscopes to share with students.