ANNUAL REPORT 2022

1st April 2021-31^st March 2022

This year has been complex as it covers two partial school years, the first ending in May/June 2021 and the second beginning in July and completing in April 2022.  In all, between the end of March 2021 and end of March 2022, we have given 41 bursaries to school students, and have a further 7 students at University. Despite raising the value of our studentships, our finances remain robust with our investment income holding up and an increase in voluntary donations.  At the Kenyan end, this success is largely due to our Co-ordinator in Kenya, Mathias Mwita.  At the Award Holders meeting he organised in April 2022, the participants commented that TMET was the only NGO still operating despite Coronavirus in the area. This speaks volumes to the value of an effective and respected local official.

The year has not been easy for Mathias and our students in Kenya. The cost of living has soared and families are increasingly hard put to find all the extra money demanded by the schools. While students have faced truncated academic years, the current one of less than six months, the schools have continued to demand extra monies, the latest now often called ‘motivational support’ to compensate staff for their more intensive teaching. That, and the frequent holidays/half terms with the need to pay rising transport costs, is a real headache for smallholder farming families.  As the rise in our bursaries does not meet the need of all these families we have allocated some additional funds to Mathias to dispense at his discretion to help those students most in need.

As this indicates, a real burden has fallen on the students who have for the last 2 years had to struggle through accelerated academic years and successive waves of Coronavirus. The situation has been made yet more complex by the changes necessitated by the new Kenyan syllabus now working its way into the secondary curriculum. In the course of all this, we have lost two students but the great majority have persevered and done well. The results at KCSE in these years have continued to be exceptional.  In 2021, these were A-, B+, two Bs, B- and C.  As a result of this and previous years’ successes, we now help 7 students at University, 4 of whom are following medical courses in Nursing.  We also contributed to a fund to pay the travel expenses of one of our students who won a scholarship to study for a degree in Dental Surgery in the United States.

This situation is made yet more confusing for our students with the successive waves of Coronavirus, the rapid increase in the cost of living and the impact of the changes necessitated by the new syllabus working its way into the secondary schools. We hope to be able to comment further on this in next year’s report.

Suzette Heald, July 2022