That nagging problem....

What happens when you have 150 students who are supposed to pay school fees and much less than half of them do so? You find yourself in a situation where you can't pay the teachers their salaries for the previous month. And this is the situation my school has found itself in.

If all the students paid their fees (as I mentioned before, it's about $5 each month) then the school would be pretty much self sustaining. But the whole purpose of the school is to offer an education to the poor children, who therefore cannot pay their fees. This is not the first time this has happened. Over the last five years, there have been many shortages in cash. However, usually the founders of the school chip in their own money to top it up. But with the poor economy right now, even more students than usual are not paying and the founders are also short on cash. The result, a Ksh 20,000 deficit for the month of February, with March already half over. The last two days have been spent in long meetings trying to think of ways to raise the money to pay the teachers, who have to pay their house rent and buy food for their families. It is not the schools fault that they are in this situation, yet it is their responsibility to solve it.

These last few days have definitely been a learning experience for me, seeing how an entire project can get stuck. They have some many plans and so many ideas, but the primary focus has to be on financial sustainability. They cannot rely on the students fees to sustain the school, and as the school grows, it will take more than some generous community members to keep it going. We have been coming up with some long term ideas, but for the short term, February and March, things are not looking so good.

If anyone reading this has some ideas on how to help the school to become financially sustainable in the long term, I would love to hear them. Everyone really wants this project to grow and succeed, and the school will work past this, but if it's a problem that comes again and again, then they will never be able to grow and fulfill their mission.

In other news, the puppies are now gone... awww. They had grown so big and were walking around the school yard! But someone has adopted them so they left yesterday for a better home. Luckily, I got some fantastic puppy pictures on Thursday :)

In more positive news, we have finally made some progress on the issue of caning in the school. I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere, but on Thursday we had a meeting with Ben and talked about it, and they actually agreed to look into other forms of discipline. I am still trying some other methods, some of which have been working. The next step is to talk to the teachers and get them to start implementing some new ideas and buying into the idea of non-violence.

In the discussion we talked about a lot of things, like making the school a place of love instead of a place of fear, Many of these kids come from harsh home environments, so we need our school to be a safe, happy and positive place for them. We also talked about taking a more positive approach instead of focusing on the negative. There's a quote by someone that says "whether you think you can or think you can't, you are right" and if we are telling the kids that they are stupid or that they can't do something, how is that helping them? How are they learning from that? Building on the positive is an approach that I support and it's good to see the administration listening to me and being more open to these ideas. We have to stay true to the reason the school exists in the first place.

But all of this is on the side until we can solve the financial situation. Hopefully by next week they will be able to find the money they need and we can get back on track. I'm still really excited about the strategic plan and I want to see these strategies being implemented as soon as possible!!