Oyugis in Western Kenya is a small but vibrant market town that services a poor rural area of approximately 100,000 souls who survive largely on subsistence farming. Like the rest of Africa it has been severely impacted by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the resultant surge in the number of of orphans.

Oyugis has poor and limited infrastructure basics such as electricity and telecommunications let alone what we in the west take for granted such as internet and broadband. Consequently the local schools get neglected by the mainstream international initiatives and have little or no real opportunity to forge links with international partners.

Over the years that Amani UK has been working in the area it has managed to facilitate on an ad-hoc basis a small number of schools links but has now decided to try and initiate a more formal and cohesive introduction process. So, earlier in 2006, two volunteers from Amani UK visited the area for their summer holidays to collect data and research whether linking on a larger scale would be viable and how it could be done.

With the help of the three local projects that Amani UK works with - JAM, Umoja, and Kirongo - invitations were sent to the local Head Teachers to meet with our volunteers and field workers in a series of local meetings. The response was phenomenal: 34 of the 36 invited Head Teachers attended. This was no mean feat given that only one of them owns a car, with one walking over 10 km to be there (and he was more than prepared to make the return journey in the same way).

In all of the meetings the answer was a resounding confirmation that they wanted to make links and that, despite the problems, they would endeavour to fully participate in the initiative. Our volunteers were constantly moved by the commitment that the Head Teachers and their communities were prepared to make on behalf of their children.

A lot of the discussions were centred on how the practicalities of a link would work given the poor infrastructure available in Oyugis with the following being the viable range of solutions:

• The Head teachers have occasional access to email in local Internet centres.
• Most of the schools have a mobile phone.
• All schools can be accessed via email through the Amani fieldworkers who have Internet access in local centres and will pass on information/letters.
• All schools have PO Boxes to which physical mail may be sent. Failing this, or for certainty of delivery, a number of visits are made each year by outreach & youth teams from the UK who would be happy to deliver correspondence/packages in both directions.

Since these early days we have recruited a part-time Schools Liaison Worker to facilitate the linking process and to keep the communication going between the schools. See the news article Welcome to our new Schools Liason Worker in Oyugis for details.

All the Head Teachers completed a pro forma that simply describes each of the schools and now forms the basis of the schools register.

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