Volunteer in Kenya

The Kenya trip is an extension of the semester and lasts 6 weeks.

After the spring semester there is departure immediately after the semester ends and after the autumn semester there is departure on one of the very first days of the new year.

As we do not make this trip to make money, the price is very dependent on the price of plane tickets – See prices for the long stay here.

 

Over the past few years, we have worked together with our connections in Kenya to start and build both a children’s school and a high school in Cheptigit, which is located in a poor rural district approx. 40 km from the town of Eldoret

Here we meet Caroline, who is a former student at Brenderup Højskole and has the opportunity to come along on a trip where you don’t just see the sights, but actually meet the people and experience the country from the inside.

The trip starts right after the end of the semester and gives you the opportunity to help as a volunteer in a place where it is really needed and where it makes sense.

Brenderup Højskole and the local association in Brenderup Project Cheptigit Primary School work closely together on the effort and on the development of the school projects.

​On Brenderup, you will meet the association, help plan your work and learn about the area, the schools and the culture, and maybe Caroline, our local contact, will stop by and tell you about how the conditions are right now.

No matter how hard you hammer at the keyboard, there are problems in the world that cannot be solved over Facebook, so the real work, both practical and with yourself as work, takes place in the Rift Valley province in central Kenya.

Cheptigit Primary School is a public school with approx. 500 students from baby class to 9th grade.

Since the start of the project, several new classrooms have been built and work has been done on electricity and water supply. The head of the school has employed an experienced construction manager as well as unemployed parents and former pupils to carry out the work, so that more families will get an income that way.

Although work has been done on the buildings since 2009, there is still a great deal of work to be done to make it possible to teach both children and adults that have not been started yet.

The good thing about being  there and doing work together with those who will use the facilities is that we are sure that our work effort is actually what is most needed and not something we have thought about on a rainy day 6000 km. away.

In Cheptigit, we work together with Caroline, who herself was a student at Brenderup Højskole and has now returned to Kenya.

There are many tasks and challenges both with construction and the school work itself, so every effort is important for the locals.

Be it the adults who can use the college to get education, as when the Danish Folk High school movement gave the rural population the opportunity to learn new things and more, as well as the very young children who start school when they are 3½ years old, if their parents can afford it and there are also classrooms for them.

One of the important projects is to make permaculture gardens together with a group of local women, so that self-sufficiency can be ensured. The financial conditions are very changeable, so being able to secure food for the children every day is a big thing. The crops are not the same as in Denmark, but the principles can be transferred, both in planning and in practical work.

Here you get a unique opportunity to experience the real cultural exchange, when people from two cultures with vastly different economic and technological starting points learn from each other and achieve joint results. You will definitely come away wiser and have learned about the simple life we are trying to invent in the west, from people who have never tried anything else, while hopefully you have passed something on yourself.