MYP Service Trip to Kwale

The AKA, Mombasa MYP students took a trip out to Kwale to facilitate a village library with Golini Primary School. This partnership is, predominately, an opportunity for a significant portion of our MYP students to actualize a community service project even if they were unable to throughout the semester. It allows for year 7s all the way to year 10s to be involved in a collective project that aims at improving rural literacy rates. It also helps develop a deeper relationship with the AKF in the Coast region all the way through the Senior School curriculum, as we were already involved in the Diploma Program with the AKF Internship programs. It is a great way to get a majority of students involved in service learning or experiential learning, and also develops leadership capacity in our students as well as allowing them to utilize some of the skills they have been acquiring, not only in the residential service program, but also in their coursework.

The Kwale project offers a cross-curricular learning experience for the students as it incorporates grammatical knowledge and oral presentation skills, with a look at basic demographics. Students have the opportunity to engage with skills such as Communication through reading instruction and practice communicating with people of different language skills and perspectives.  The MYP global contexts also play an important role in guiding how students frame their learning. The Kwale project delves into the issues found in the fairness and development global context by examining human capability and development.

Year 7s and 8s take the lead on this program as the year 8s focus on Literacy in their Service Learning. This provides them with a unique opportunity to be our “local expert” and assist in “training” the year 7s a few weeks in advance in literacy skills. The hope is to begin to introduce the year 7s to what they will be focused on next year and prepare them to lead this trip in the future.

In our first year, we also incorporated year 9s and 10s with great success. Our students were responsible for sorting the books, collating, and alphabetizing them in order to facilitate the reading program of the year 7s and 8s. They then provided support in activities and buddy reading, allowing for collaboration across year levels.

The Academy students provide support to a preexisting program sustained by the AKF. This allows for longevity of the program and facilitates future visits. It is the hope that this project becomes a yearly endeavor that not only introduces our students to service learning, but also to the larger mission of the AKDN and sustainable development. Success in this project will also hopefully lead to further collaboration with the AKF in other program areas where students may be helpful. 

By Max Miller

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