Ewaso Lions has donated 60 brand new desks to a local primary school as part of an innovative conservation agreement. Thanks to a generous gift by one of our donors, we were able to provide the much needed desks to Lorubae Primary School in northern Kenya. The school now has 30 desks for Standard 8 students with a lockable compartment for book storage, and 30 bench style desks for Standard 7 students that seat two children each.
Under our Education Program, we support local Kenyan schools that cannot always provide resources to meet their students’ needs. Given the strong ties between youth education and wildlife conservation, we support schools as a way of building capacity for Kenya’s future wildlife leaders.
Ewaso Lions donated 60 new desks to Lorubae Primary School, which is located near Samburu National Reserve in Kenya.
Lorubae Primary School is a day school for boys and girls, and is located within the Archers Post area of Samburu County, on the border with Samburu National Reserve. Since its establishment in 1991, the school has continued to expand in size and now serves 388 local children: 193 girls and 195 boys.
No renovations have been made since the school’s establishment, and infrastructure has deteriorated significantly through the years. Much of the furniture has been destroyed by termites, dust, and strong winds, leaving the children with nothing to sit on and the teachers with nowhere secure to store confidential records. In March, Ewaso Lions began working with Lorubae’s Head Teacher, Priscillah Lengila, to help turn the situation around.
Previously, students had to sit on the floor or crowd into the old desks.
But to make this more than a mere charity project, Ewaso Lions worked with the school to develop an agreement with a conservation angle. First, the administration has committed to keeping the desks well maintained. Second, the parents of the schools’ pupils have pledged not to graze their livestock within the boundaries of the National Reserves. Livestock encroachment is a significant factor in leading to decline in wildlife numbers and may also result in additional human-lion conflict when livestock strays into lion habitat. Lastly, while Ewaso Lions covered the cost for materials, the school covered the construction costs, giving them a vested interest in the desks’ long term care.
In exchange for the new desks, parents of the students have pledged not to graze their livestock inside the National Reserves where lions and other wildlife live.
We recently visited Lorubae Primary School and we were delighted to see that the children are already making good use of the new desks. As a bonus, the project has not only helped those in Standards 7 and 8, but the desks previously used by these classes have filtered down to other Standards – so everyone now has a desk to use!