“The trip was an educational immersion experience to work and collaborate with educators in Kenya and teach students who are underprivileged with limited resources,” said Graduate School of Education professor Diane Rodriguez, Ph.D., who spearheaded the spring trip. “It’s part of the University’s mission of cura personalis.”

For 12 days in early May, the graduate students learned about classroom instruction and curriculum in Kenya, where the majority of children attend primary school, but nearly half of the country’s population lives below the poverty line. Through visits to four Kenyan schools and one university, the GSE students put into practice the teaching and counseling skills they had learned at home. And through conversations in English and a smattering of Swahili, they found solidarity with students and educators in a foreign country.

Applying Fordham Lessons to Actual Classrooms

The Kenyan children were curious about what life was like in America. Interiano said they peppered the Fordham students with questions: “What does the currency look like?” “Who’s the biggest fashion designer?” Another student, whose school housed farm animals, asked, “Are there cows in New York?”

The six students not only answered their questions—yes, cows do live in New York—but also weaved lessons from their GSE instruction into Kenyan classrooms. At St. Jude Academy, a school where students spoke both Swahili and English, Interiano taught sixth-graders how to make their sentences more expressive.

“Instead of just saying, ‘A man and a woman are getting married,’ [I would suggest] ‘A beautiful bride is marrying a groom,’” said Interiano, who plans on becoming a bilingual elementary school teacher.

Another Fordham student said she used her training from a GSE career counseling course—particularly a lesson on the power of social media—to help Kenyan students chart their own career paths.

“We had a conversation about [what they do on]social media,” said Chelsea Bowens, a master’s student in school counseling. “They like to look at celebrities. So [I told them] you can also use it to explore your interests and find out more about your career options.”

A Warm Welcome

The two cities they taught in—Eldoret and Nairobi—embraced them with open arms, said the GSE students. As they drove from school to school, they waved from their bus window to local townspeople in the streets. Outdoor vendors ushered them inside their stores with a simple Swahili greeting: “Jambo!” And school administrators welcomed them with doughy pastries and roasted nuts.

Kenya reminded them of home, too. Eileen Interiano, a GSE master’s student from Long Island, said she saw buildings as high as Manhattan skyscrapers, though these were bordered by palm fronds instead of oak tree leaves. The city streets were filled as early as 6 a.m. and as late as 9 p.m. And the food—rice, potatoes, boiled cabbage, chicken, and a flaky, fried flatbread called chapati—reminded Interiano of her native Hispanic cuisine.  

“Kenya makes you feel like you’re at home. They welcome you, even if they’re strangers,” Interiano said. “And the kids … they just fill your heart with so much love.”

An Inside Look at the Kenyan Educational System

But the trip wasn’t all about teacher training. Several GSE students said their 12 days in Kenya also showed them the need for equal education in many local schools. They spoke with professors from the Catholic University of East Africa about how many girls don’t continue their education past primary school, particularly in some rural areas. They often cease schooling because their families aren’t able to afford their academic fees or because they’re married young, the GSE students said.

In her journal entries from Kenya, Bowens wrote about meeting a young woman living in the “slums” who, unable to afford school fees, made a living as a housegirl. And Interiano recalled meeting an eighth grader named Valerie—a girl with dreams of becoming a doctor.

“Just being with her for a couple of minutes … it made me emotional,” Interiano said. “I hope that she continues her education. What breaks my heart is sometimes they lack the money or support to get there.”

Bowens, who is working toward becoming a school counselor in a Title I school in the U.S.—a school where the majority of students come from low-income families—said her mentorship experience in Kenya has made her more aware of the different factors that can affect children’s lives.

“As counselors, we sit and talk to the students. The teachers might not see the whole picture, but we’re trying to get the whole picture,” Bowens said. “There’s a child, yes. But behind that child is the parents, schools, teachers, their physical environment, and their mental [environment].”

Building A Boarding School for Kenyan Girls

In 2016, Rodriguez, a GSE professor in the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, founded Every Girl Is Important, a non-profit organization that promotes the education of underserved girls around the world, particularly in Kenya. For the past few years, it has been working to raise $100,000 to build a boarding school for girls ages 11 to 17 in rural Eldoret. The organization has now reached nearly 80% of its original goal, and will commence construction once the total amount has been raised, said Rodriguez, who also spoke in a recent interview aired on TV network Telemundo.

Part of the reason why the GSE team visited Kenya this year was to prepare for the new boarding school, said Ashley Rodriguez, a Ph.D. student in school psychology at GSE.

“We wanted to get a sense of what the high-performing schools [in Kenya]are doing, what they aren’t doing so that the school could be comparable [to other high-performing schools],” she said.

The trip also motivated the GSE students to think about how their time in Kenya will shape them as future educators. For Interiano, it means giving her students—both boys and girls—the same opportunities.

“I want to make sure that wherever I teach, kids are getting an equal education,” she said.

The families were hoping to enroll their children in a new high school for disadvantaged Kenyan girls that Rodriguez has been raising money to build.

During the visit, a single mother told Rodriguez that she was recently faced with a tough decision: As she could only afford one tuition, which one of her four teenage girls would she send to school?

“She chose the eldest girl, but the second girl was also a brilliant kid,” said Rodriguez. “When the mom said that, the other girl started crying hysterically and ran away, because she wanted to go to school, too.”

Rodriguez said the experience made her realize how strained the education system is in rural parts of Kenya.

“There are many opportunities for girls to go to elementary school, but [not]many opportunities for girls to pursue a high school education, especially if they’re poor,” Rodriguez said.

In some cases, a girl as old as 16 will remain in elementary school because there are no other options for schooling.

The nuns from the Assumption Sisters of Eldoret, acquired land on which to build a school for high school girls. The project is already registered with the Kenyan government. Rodriguez started an Every Girl Is Important campaign to build the secondary boarding school.

Because many of the girls live far away from the site and can’t afford transportation to get there every day, Rodriguez, who will be serving as the project’s director, said arrangements are being made to house them on school grounds.

If all goes well, Rodriguez hopes to construct four classrooms and a dorm this fall. She said it would take about three months to build the boarding school, which is expected to be opened in January 2018.

“For many of these girls, this is their only hope to change their lives,” said Rodriguez, who explained that Kenyan girls face the obstacles of gender discrimination, abuse, high levels of HIV/AIDS, child labor, and child marriages. “Their parents cannot afford to send them to high school, so that’s often the end of schooling for the girls.”

Documenting the struggle  

In partnership with GSE, Rodriguez has produced a documentary narrated by Harvard scholar, critic, and producer Henry Louis Gates Jr. to bring attention to Every Girl Is Important, a 5013c organization she started to help build the school.

The 20-minute documentary features interviews with some of the girls who want to attend high school. Rodriguez said the goal is to present their challenges and show how the Every Girl Is Important project seeks to improve their prospects for the future.

“If you listen to every girl that we interviewed in the documentary, they say that they want to come back and help their family and their community [when they’re done with school],” she said. “They want to be nurses, doctors, engineers, and lawyers.”

Tackling barriers to education 

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, at least 1 million Kenyan children are denied the chance to attend school.  In 2008, almost all children in Nairobi from well-to-do households had been to school. Some 55 percent of poor girls living in the North Eastern part of the country had never been to school, compared to 43 percent of poor boys, according to the report.

With help from a Fordham Faculty Fellowship, Rodriguez will be training East African educators during the fall semester of 2017. She said she hopes to learn more about the academic hurdles facing the Kenyan community.

“[This]  would not only help train educators in Kenya in the areas of bilingualism and inclusion of individuals with disabilities, but it would also inform the research on how language and culture influence the formation of teacher identity,” she said.

As part of the fellowship, Rodriguez said she will also be helping to prepare, plan, and implement a program of study for the Eldoret boarding school. She seeks to create a “solid and rigorous academic curriculum” that incorporates technology, and prepares the girls for college.

“I want girls to have opportunities to excel in life,” she said.

The “fair trade fair” will take place at the Lincoln Center campus on April 22, 23, and 24, and will feature crafts made in Haitian, Kenyan, and Guatemalan communities.

“We’re trying to connect artists in these developing communities with consumers,” said Pinar Zubaroglu, a doctoral candidate at the Graduate School of Social Service.

Erick Rengifo Minaya, Ph.D., an associate professor of economics and founder of Spes Nova, enlisted Zubaroglu, who traveled frequently to Haiti as part of her dissertation research, to help make contacts with artists there.

“Working in Haiti I began to realize that there are so many challenges, but the people are so resilient,” she said.

Andrew Meade, Ph.D., co-founder of the Vassar Haiti Project, said the peoples’ resiliency is reflected in their artistic creations.

“It’s accessible art. It reaches out and grabs you with rich colors and a subject matter rich with joy,” he said.

The Vassar group will be bringing 200 paintings and hundreds of handmade crafts to the event, he said.  The event will feature a panel discussion titled “Communities at Risk:  Social Justice in the Developing World” at 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 22. Panelists include, Vinay Swami, Ph.D., professor and chair of French and Francophone Studies at Vassar, Patrick Struebi, founder of Fairtrasa, and Sean Murray, associate professor of Core Studies at St. John’s.

“A lot of organizations try to do this kind of work alone, but all the groups participating really believe in fair trade—not just the concept but in the application of it,” said Meade.  “Through their arts and efforts, we are empowering all three communities.”

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Gabelli Business School will also participate in the three-day event.  Proceeds will go to support Spes Nova, the Vassar Haiti Project, and student-driven fair trade groups at St. John’s.

See a schedule of events.