The first two years of life often decide how a child’s educational future, and therefore his/her future, in general, is going to be. The first two years may determine if a child is going to die in poverty, or if he is going to succeed. We, therefore, start them early, if possible, from birth.
English is the medium of instruction in schools, yet their home languages are different. This affects the way they do in high school, and whether they go to college or not. They have to compete with children whose home language is English. Starting them early with English will give them a fighting chance.
An after-school program was started to help the children with their homework and also to keep them off the streets. Many of the children were doing poorly at school. We thought that it was because they went to school hungry, and Math is usually among the first subjects. We then decided to feed them breakfast also.
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They did do better. However, this part of the program became untenable because school starts too early, and the schools are far from the village.
The elementary students have to walk to their school, and the secondary students are supposedly bused to their school but the buses are very frequently broken down and the children have to walk about 5 kilometers to and from school.
This is still an unsolved part of the program. Hopefully, in the future, transportation will become available for these children. I, Jonathan, carried some children in my pickup truck but this caused more problems as the truck could take only 14 children at a time.
