SEME, Kisumu,13th December -It was pomp and colour as St Jerome Emiliano Children’s Home School celebrated its fifth anniversary since its inception as a centre of academic excellence and offering support to the needy students.
Domiciled in Seme Sub-County, Kisumu County, they currently have a total of 250 children who receives direct assistance from the institution and extended a similar gesture to others from the nearby schools.
During the the momentous occasion held on Saturday December 13th, Mr Elly Opondo its founder and director highly appreciated the immense support they have been getting from corporate donations.
“The funding is what has been keeping the organization running and we are using an average of Sh2.3 million every year to cater for the school feeding program of about 250 to 300 children and other co-curricula activities,” Mr Opondo said.
The learning institution is curated with the much-needed and well equipped ICT and Health centres, Women Empowerment and Scholarship programs.
According to Mr Opondo, the teen mothers , and school dropout mother’s are accorded assistance through the women empowerment programs.
“Under the scholarship programs, we have so far supported 37 vulnerable children through different secondary schools such as Ngere Boys, Rang’ala Boys, Ng’iya Girls, Kakamega Boys, Lwak Girls, and Butere Girls,” Mr Opondo said.
He explained that they will also be supporting through universities a host of local schools with the first cohort who sat for their KCSE exams this year awaiting for their results.
Meanwhile, invited guests comprising of local political leaders urged the government to review the Sh3,000 junior school feeding program that has been a burden to parents paid per term.
Firing the first salvo on the matter, Seme legislator and Chief Guest James Nyikal advised the government to make the feeding program optional to the parents.
“Jerome Emiliano School had been a blessing to the community and moreso to the vulnerable families since it was started as a school that only admits children from poor background as the school takes care of their feeding program,” he said.
Hon Nyikal added that they have been at the forefront of helping in acquiring learning materials to the children with the help of the national, international and individual donations. “This is an initiative that we must uphold as a community and embrace it wholeheartedly,” Nyikal said.
He assured the local residents once the House resumes after recess, legislators will look into issues like social protection to take care of the vulnerable children .
“We are going to raise the school feeding issue in Parliament by drumming support against it,” he said as he stressed out that it is a burden to parents who have children in junior secondary schools .
Hon Nyikal mentioned that parents are still struggling to understand how CBE is working, as there are parents who have children in junior secondary schools , and universities.
The funding model in universities he says has also not picked on well on the capitation. “We will have to review it as this comes in when we will have a major transition for the first time for Senior schools.”
As as the Chair of the Health Committee, Nyikal called on the review of the health agreement signed between Kenya and the US regarding funding and the data agreement.
“Although the matter lies in court, the content of the data still remains a major challenge to the health stakeholders and Kenyans at large: it is too broad and it can be dangerous,” he cautioned.
Nyikal further urged Kenyans to embrace Social Health Insurance (SHA) as it has a lot of benefits as he applauded the government for embracing the cancer patients into the program.
