Welcome to the 2013 Summer Institute Blog! We’ll be posting regular updates from this year’s Summer Institute here. Please check in often to read stories and see photos from The Kibera School for Girls!
Right now we’re preparing for the Summer Institute to start in exactly two weeks. We’ve been preparing for several months for the program to start, and we are so excited that it’s almost here.
We have an incredible team of volunteers coming to KSG this year from outside Kenya. Volunteers went through a rigorous, very competitive application process and we feel lucky to have them. They’ll be traveling to Nairobi from colleges all over the US – from Stanford, NYU, Barnard, Wesleyan, Oberlin, and more! In preparation for the SI, everyone has been responsible for coming up with detailed lesson plans of the activities and games they’d like to do with our students. We have some great ideas already. Our favorites include: We can’t wait for them to arrive and hit the ground running!
Not to be outdone, we also have an incredible group of SHOFCO Youth that will be participating in the Institute. These college-aged youth are from Kibera, and are involved with SHOFCO’s programs, including the football program, the theater program, and the Ghetto Mirror, our youth-produced newspaper. We’ve been fortunate enough to have many of the leaders and stars from these programs join our SI team! We’ve been meeting for the past several weeks, planning for the program and coming up with lesson ideas. The SHOFCO Youth team is really looking forward to meeting the American volunteers and to getting to work in the Kibera School for Girls!
A Summer Institute lesson in action!
In addition to this team, we will be having two participants from last year coming to join us as Summer Institute Assistants – Lily and Nicodemus! These two are wonderful and will be able to help this year’s participants throughout the program.
The day after the American volunteers arrive we will begin our orientation. Orientation is a chance for the Americans to learn more about Kenya, Kibera, and SHOFCO. It will also be a time for the SHOFCO Youth to meet the Americans, and vice versa. During orientation, volunteers will also work to polish up their lesson plans so that when they normal schedule begins the following week, they will be ready to go!
We’ll continue to share more as the program quickly approaches – and of course will be updating this routinely to let you know what is happening at the Summer Institute. As always, we also highly suggest you follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook so that you can always know the latest from the ground!
To see more photos from the 2012 Summer Institute check out our Facebook album!
The 2012 Summer Institute Crew!
[Are you an undergraduate student interested in participating in the 2014 Summer Institute program? Great! Send an email to Nathan at nathan@shininghopeforcommunities.org and we'll notify you with important information and deadlines as next Summer approaches!]