STAREHE SCHOOLS TARGET TO RAISE KSHS.400 MILLION

Alumni of Starehe Boys’ and Starehe Girls’ Centres plan to raise over Kshs. 400 million this year to finance the education of academically talented but needy students.

The funds will be mobilized under the Griffin Memorial Endowment Trust (GMET), which was formed in 2009 in honour of the school’s late founder, the legendary Dr. Geoffrey Griffin. The fund already has Kshs. 200 million in its coffers. The interest that is realized from this investment is used for the sponsorship of children from deprived backgrounds.

 Out of approximately 1,500 boys and girls in the Starehe Schools, some 70 percent rely on Starehe for food, accommodation, health and educational needs. “Securing Starehe into the future and perpetuity requires the strengthening of GMET. It is estimated that with 2,000 endowments of Kshs.1 million each, totalling Ksh2 billion, the GMET fund will guarantee free places in both the Starehe (boys and girls) Schools, forever or for as long as both GMET and the schools are in existence,” said Raymond Rono, chairman of the Old Starehian Society (OSS), the school’s influential alumni organization.

 The school, which celebrates 60 years of existence this year, under the theme Securing Starehe for Another 60 Years, has had a long and strong tradition of secondary school scholarships for students from all over the country, awarded annually, on the basis of need and performance in the KCPE (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education) examination.

“Stahere@60 celebrations provide a good opportunity to focus on fundraising for the GMET endowments, with a target of Ksh600 million in 2019. This translates into a very ambitious target of Kshs. 400 million, to be raised through the celebrations and other fundraising programmes,” added Mr Rono, a few minutes before he embarked on a fund-raising walk from Kaboi Primary School in Nandi County to Starehe Boys’ Centre in Nairobi.

The walk whose target is to raise Kshs. 10 million, will see Mr Rono cover about 350 kilometres in two weeks, while traversing eight counties and 22 constituencies. It  is sponsored by D.Light, a company that provides affordable, high quality off-grid solar systems. The function was attended by the company’s  regional business manager, North Rift , Mr. Nixon Kotut and Aldai MP Cornelius Serem, among others.