An interesting scene played out at a meeting held under a huge acacia tree in a village in Loriamatet, Turkana County late November.

The meeting had been called to discuss education in the small settlement. It emerged from the speakers present that the number of girls going to school was reducing.

The elders and the chief turned to the women present for answers.

The conversations, however, went through translators, with the main speakers using Kiswahili, which was translated into Turkana by the chief or somebody else, with the reply and follow-up questions taking the same long route back and forth.

After the debate, the women asked the chief and the elders present to ask the men present as well as they would have a better idea.

The question, the back and forth, and the challenges are not new to Charles Lorii, a community volunteer from Loriamatet working with Zizi Afrique, a non-governmental organization, to further education in the county.

The reasons for girls dropping off vary in this traditionally nomadic community, says Charles, such as early marriages pre-arranged between their parents and the subsequent need to tend to their children.

He says the weekly meetings, also known as barazas, help unravel some of these education issues in the community.

Charles is a community volunteer in the Accelerated Learning Programme (ALP), which was created via a partnership between Zizi Afrique, Safaricom Foundation and the Diocese of Lodwar. It started in 2018.

ALP engages learners who lack literacy and numeracy skills and brings them up to the right level so that they can be able to read and write and solve numerical problems. The learners mainly targeted are between Grade 3 and Grade 5.

Turkana was among counties where learners had fallen behind in literacy skills in a study carried out by Uwezo East Africa in 2018. The report from the study showed that only three out of five learners between Grade 3 and 8 could read Grade 2 level Swahili.

ALP has the support of the Government through the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), which ensures that the programme is registered in registered schools, which are under the ambit of the Government.

“Teachers assist the learners to understand the basics. They assist learners to catch up by carrying out extra learning. They also engage with the parents in the communities to find out the learning needs and challenges of these learners,” says Wilfred Mosigisi, a Deputy Director at TSC.

The ALP is divided into school-based and Community Based Learning (CBL). The school-based programs are carried out in schools two hours a day for 15 days and the CBL in the community, where teachers meet the small groups of learners two hours a day for three days a week.

CBL draws its support from the community, with involvement from influential quarters such as elders, chiefs, parents and volunteers as well as teachers.

In CBL, both school-going learners and children who are not actively going to school are taught.

“Teachers in the ALP who are in community-based programs are supposed to meet the children in their villages because these teachers come from those villages and engage with them. There are areas where children are far from school, so teachers meet them there,” Mr. Mosigisi explains.

In this vast county, the long distances between schools determine whether to adopt a school-based or community-based approach to the ALP.

Wilson Losike, the ALP coordinator in Turkana County shed light on some of the differences between the two approaches.

“In the learning camps, we had 487 learners in the school-based program and 287 learners in the community-based program. For community-based, we target learners both in and out of school irrespective of the classes. For school-based, learning takes place from Monday to Friday, while for community-based, learning takes place 3 days a week in the village or a church, or a setting outside the school environment.”

Zizi Afrique has trained community volunteers on the program with the support of TSC and the Ministry of Education, who carry out their assessment.

For the CBL to succeed, all the stakeholders must be in sync: parents play a central role in this, thus the need for regular barazas like the one at Loriamatet village, where Charles watched the debate keenly.

“In my camp register, I have 23 learners. I have been teaching them since 15 September 2021. I have seen changes since my first assessment. For example, I had a boy who was herding goats who could not read after the training through CBL, he is now able to read and construct sentences,” Charles recalls.

It is easy to understand why the community revers Charles as the education beacon. He is the only one to have completed secondary school and with this, it makes it easier for him to convince parents to bring their children to learn.

“They look at me and want their children to emulate me,” he reflects.

Charles has learnt how to use the teaching guides and assessments of the school-based and community-based approaches to ALP, which are the same.

Literacy is measured using stages. The first stage is Hawezi, where a learner can barely read. The next level is Silabi, where a learner cannot comprehend syllables. At Maneno, level, the learner is not able to understand words. At Sentensi level, these are learners who cannot construct sentences and the final stage is Aya, where a learner cannot read a paragraph.

Charles’ role is to ensure that a learner moves to Hawezi level to Aya level in a learning camp that takes place for 15 days; where they can be able to read paragraphs and understand. For the CBL, reading materials are instrumental as well as fun and play techniques. Charles lauds Safaricom Foundation for supporting ALP through learning materials. At Loriamatet, Safaricom Foundation constructed a classroom that has elevated the classroom environment for ALP training.

For Simon Ngirotin, an assistant teacher at Nagitonye, another fishing community in the county, using songs and play ensures learners interpret numbers and calculate much faster than formal means such as reading.

“It is always about striking a balance between formal and informal teaching when approaching CBL. These young ones enjoy activities that excite them. We tap into that to execute teaching. It is repetitive and participatory which is strategic for teaching numeracy,” says Ngirotin.

Nicholas Wamere, the Sub-County Director of Education for Turkana Central noted that most trained teachers who are volunteers in the ALP leave whenever there is a recruitment of teachers and they are absorbed in the TSC, which causes a shortage of teaching resources.

The volunteers trained by Zizi Afrique fill this gap ably shoring up the community and stepping in to teach and assess learners under the guidance of curriculum support officers.

CBL thrives when there is support from government agencies, who are represented by chiefs like Leonard Eporon at Loriamatet.

“I provide security, I create awareness on government policies and I am involved in empowering education as a government officer, I ensure children are learning. I convene barazas twice a month to drive home the importance of education. When I retire, who will take over from me? That is why I tell parents to educate their children so that they are proud of them,” says Leonard.

He says the community-based approach of the ALP has seen an increase in enrolment where it is much easier to shepherd children to a community learning centre where schools are far away.

They also get access to education broadcasts on radio, which helped when the pandemic had forced the closure of schools.

The main challenge bedevilling the CBL approach to implementing the ALP is the lack of food and water in communities that are far-flung. The unavailability of either will cause class attendance to fluctuate or classes are paralysed altogether.

Still, CBL is bridging the education gap in that it reaches out to learners in school and out of school and is effective because all stakeholders in a community are involved in the pursuit of education.

Charles is hopeful as he is optimistic that the community-based learning and community involvement in the ALP will be a game-changer in the education fortunes of Turkana County.