Shanti stopped over in Thika for 3 days in March 2018 as part of his Charity support trip to South Africa, Malawi & Kenya and spent time training teachers & upgrading RACHEL Servers.

Chania Boys High School

He provided further training to all staff on using RACHEL and training to IT Teachers on updating the Raspberry Pi software in the e-Learning Centre. He also took the opportunity to thoroughly investigate the science Labs set-up and to understand the lack of materials within this set-up.

He setup a RACHEL Server and a Workstation in the Staff Room at the High school and the Primary School to enable the staff to get a first-hand experience of the RACHEL system before they venture out to teach using the e-Learning Centre. He donated a number of laptops to be used by staff for Server Development and personal staff development. He also donated numerous headphones to make sure every workstation had a headphone such that students could watch lesson content containing videos and sound.

• 

• 

Shanti also donated a number of basketballs to the school as it’s existing stock was threadbare and depleted.

• 

• 

Gatumani Primary School

He set up a RACHEL Server in the Staff Room enabling instant access to RACHEL content – Khan Academy, Wikipedia, Books and tons more – via their government provided tablets. The same very tablets which were sitting in a safe as they were unusable due to lack of teacher training and content. Encouraged the High School to act as mentor to the primary school children in the use of digital equipment.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Showed the teachers how to access RACHEL content on their Tablets, mobile phones or laptops.

• 

• 

• 

Avionics Club

Shanti was asked to help with the activities of the Avionics Club.

The club was launched last year by Paul Kanyi, from Ninety Nines flying school located at Wilson Airport in Kenya. The Club meets once a week to watch aviation related videos, research from the e-learning and the latest trends in the aviation industry, make models of plane etc

The Club members attend airshows and the aviation congress forums to enable its members to gain an understanding of the needs of the aviation industry and enable its members to gain qualifications to join this industry.

One of the members has made a paper model of an airplane and another here demonstrating an IoT helicopter he has made using Raspberry Pi.

• 

• 

• 

Shanti offered to put the Club members in contact with people working in the Aviation industry in UK.

February/ March 2018

Chetana (Education Chair) conducted her annual visit to Chania Boys High School (CBHS).  Since her previous visit, Peter Kariuki, Headmaster, had just recently moved onto a new post in the foothills of Mt. Kenya and replaced with Allan Macharia. TTAT would like to express our thanks to Peter Kariuki with whom we had not only built an excellent rapport but also delivered a number of key projects together.

As Allan Macharia had literally taken on the new role days before and was still getting his feet under the table, Chetana worked primarily with Simon Bahome (Deputy Headmaster) and Departmental Heads to ensure work of previous years was still continuing to produce beneficial results for the school.

A liaison project, between the Gatumaini Primary School and Chania Boys School, was introduced whereby   30 of the oldest primary school pupils would be taken to the e-learning centre by their teacher one afternoon a week to use stations set up by TTAT. Boys from the High school would work in pairs to help and support the Primary school children. An additional by-product from the TTAT implemented e-Learning Centre delivered in 2017.

Chetana carried out the usual lesson observations and sat in on departmental meetings with Heads of Departments and their staff. These meetings highlighted key materials not available to the school but necessary for every day school activities, which led to Chetana producing a list of urgently required items that TTAT could help in procuring for the school. A detailed oral report was given to the TTAT Committee explaining what was needed, where and by whom.  The Committee recognised the items listed as being necessary for developing the teaching and learning within the CBHS. The Committee is actively working on delivering the items to the school.

Chetana also met 2 organisers of The Thika Primary Schools Athletics Event and established that the event suffered from lack of athletic sports equipment, e.g. javelins, discus, shotput. TTAT offered to help in the procurement of this athletic equipment but have subsequently lost contact with the organisers.

The NEW YEAR has brought some excellent news for TTAT. After months of perseverance and in pursuit of exacting requirements, The Thika Alumni Trust has been granted ‘CHARITY STATUS’. Our thanks go to Dalpat, TTAT’s Communications Officer, for all the hard work involved in submitting applications to the Charity Commission. We can now carry forward with confidence our vision of supporting students in Thika.

In June 2017, Harpal Punia, TTAT’s Project Manager, went to Kenya to complete the promised installation of power points, computers and the RACHEL server. In a few days’ time, he had the e-Learning centre fully functional for student use.

TTAT devised and sponsored a system consisting of 30 Clients (interactive stations) based on Raspberry Pi hardware and the innovative RACHEL (Remote Areas Community Hotspots for Education and Learning) server as the source for the educational material (software that includes an encyclopaedia (Wikipedia), video lectures (Khan Academy), textbooks (CK-12), agricultural information, educational games, coding programs, medical resources, Swahili Wikipedia and much more. Harpal also took with him other teaching and learning aides – projectors, speakers, science equipment, whiteboards, Raspberry Pi books, Learn to Code books and numerous other items.

Using a local contractor, power points were fitted to the desks followed by the installation of  computer  monitors, keyboards and mice and the required Ethernet cabling and routers. And ‘hey presto’ it was all up and running by the 29 June for the grand opening in the afternoon.

In his speech to the big gathering of local dignitaries and the press, Mr Peter Kariuki, Principal of Chania High for Boys, thanked TTAT for their support to the school over the past years. ‘We are so grateful to this group of alumni who have been assisting us through various programmes. They started by donating KES 100,000 (c £750) worth of books for our library and then supplied furniture worth KES 64,000 for our Dining Hall. They have today supplied 30 computers and e-learning material worth KES 1.5 million,’ said Mr Kariuki. He explained that this latest project would assist in motivating the students and incorporating them into the global village. He acknowledged that the school was now on par with other world top-rate schools in terms of accessibility of learning content, a factor that will go a long way in improving the students’ achievements and their adaptability to the global environment.

Well done, Harpal, Shanti Bhardwa (TTAT’s Technical Consultant) and Elizabeth Punia!

The story was almost immediately published on the Thika Town Today’s website. Access it at the the link below:

http://www.thikatowntoday.co.ke/2017/06/chania-high-school-alumni-donate-kes-15.html