Two Kenyan schools make it to top global prize list
Still I Rise International School in Nairobi which, together with Amani School for Refugees in the list of top 10 most inspirational schools.
Two Kenyan learning institutions have made it to the list of top 10 most inspirational schools for the new USD250,000 (Sh29 million) World’s Best School prize.
Amani School for Refugees and Still I Rise International School emerged among the top in a prize launched this year by T4 Education in partnership with Templeton World Charity Foundation, Accenture and American Express.
Amani School for Refugees is a charity-based teacher training college and primary school in Kakuma, while Still I Rise International School is an international private school based in Nairobi.
Amani School made it to the list of the World’s Best School Prize for Overcoming Adversity while Still I Rise International School stood out for Community Collaboration.
The five World’s Best School Prizes was founded by T4 Education in partnership with Accenture, American Express, Yayasan Hasanah, Templeton World Charity Foundation and the Lemann Foundation.
Covid-19
Its aim was to celebrate schools around the world for the fundamental role they play in developing the next generation of learners and for their enormous contribution to society’s progress especially in the wake of Covid-19.
According to the founder of T4 Education and the World’s Best School Prizes Vikas Pota, Covid-19 has greatly contributed to the global education crisis where over 1.5 billion learners have been impacted by school and university closures.
“Even before the pandemic, the UN warned progress was already too slow to achieve universal quality education by 2030,” he said in a statement.
He added that he together with partners, they launched the World’s Best School Prizes as a grassroots solution to help build the systemic change needed.
Amani School for Refugees is run by a group of volunteers who were themselves refugees.
Help refugee children
The initiative was the result of a community effort to give children in the Kakuma refugee camp the education their teachers received.
Still I Rise International School is the first school in the world to offer the International Baccalaureate to refugee children free of charge.
It is located at the heart of Mathare slum, one of the largest informal settlements in Africa.
The school works to celebrate differences among its diverse students and tackle the inequalities they face, providing them with two meals a day, uniforms, stationery and health insurance.
