Playground Equipment

Play is integral to any academic environment. Social and emotional development is an important part of a child’s education alongside their cognitive development. Through play children learn to organise and make sense of the world, develop their balance, speed, agility and coordination and to work through tensions in their lives. It brings out creativity, builds vocabulary, concentration, flexibility, and empathy whilst reducing stress and increasing feelings of well-being.

Project Aims:

  • To design and install an appropriate play area for the Primary school
  • To help the Primary school nurture the social and emotional development of the children
  • bring out creativity

In collaboration with Griffiths Playgrounds (www.griffithsplaygrounds.co.ke/) and with the co-ordination of the school, The Hummingbird Initiative has installed play equipment at Kanjoo Primary. There were many delays due to bad weather and flooding roads into the community impassable.

In the words of the Headmaster Richard Kimathi:
“I am overwhelmed to say that the playing equipments are a dream come true to all Kanjoo primary school teachers and learners. You can imagine the joy bearing in mind that not many Kenyan schools have such equipments. Mine is to you and the HI for the wonderful job and our promise to take care of them, they will be a tool of academic progression.
Bravo THI! Kind Regards, Richard”

Fencing

At present the school is a freeway for people and animals. Members of the community walk or ride motorbikes across the land to gain access to other areas of the community. Construction workers and villagers pass to fill up containers with water from the river. Animals enter the area to graze, destroying trees and crops as they go. It is impossible for the teaching staff to restrict the pupils’ access to the village and as a result the pupils can leave the school grounds during the day and are unaccounted for. There is a high level of teenage pregnancies in the community, not helped by this unsupervised freedom. Teaching and learning is constantly disrupted by open access to and from the school.

Project Aims:

  • To provide resources to enable the completion of a fence to surround the school grounds
  • To help create a safer and more constructive learning environment for all
  • To protect the trees and valuable crops grown on school grounds.

Although the school started to erect the fence, they could not sustain the cost of the chain link in order to finish the job. The Hummingbird Initiative has collaborated with the school to provide the remaining chain link, the wire and other necessary resources to complete the project. The school has again provided the labour.