Strike

Dear GOGCP family,

We pray that you are having a blessed weekend. We wanted to reach out to you requesting prayers for our children. Our children at Grace Family have not started school this quarter due to ongoing teachers strike since the beginning of August. They went to school for few days at the start of this quarter and then they were sent back home.  It’s been on and off. We are really worried about this, it’s affecting our children, and children in Kenya in general.  The teachers are demanding a salary increase of at least 150 percent and the government, however, insists that it has no money to implement an increase in their monthly wages. The teachers are citing the high cost of living in Kenya today to justify their strike. The strike has affected all our children since they are currently attending public schools at the primary (1-8^th grade) or secondary (High school) levels since private schools are more expensive. The students were supposed to report to class weeks ago, but unfortunately they have not yet been able to resume their studies.  We have received various reports that children are very frustrated and stressed on when they will be going back to school and resuming their normal studies.

Our main concern about the strike is that the loss of class time will negatively impact public school students' overall education compared with their contemporaries who attend private school and are not affected by the strike. This is affecting us a lot since all our children attend public school.  Another concern relates to how students will spend their time while they are not attending school. Our children are very restless; they easily get in trouble because they are now idle. With no teachers at school, the children might fall prey to bad behavior and groups. We are hoping that the standoff between the teachers and Kenyan government will be resolved soon. The children are really suffering.

We are also praying and hoping that we will finish the school construction before the end of next year. This will help us resolve future issues like this. Please help us complete classrooms (roofing-$1,500, plastering-$1,000, concrete-$1,200, windows and doors $600, Furniture and blackboard-$1,750, Labor $1,500, Estimated total=$7,550). Click HERE if you would like to make a donation towards school construction. The goal of GOGCP is to continue to make a difference in the lives of children who need help. With the help of donations from supporters such as you, we will continue to see more and more orphans and poor children succeed in life. Thank you for supporting GOGCP and for praying for the school children.  We can’t do anything without such a blessing people like you. The children are and our family are praying for you, and your family for God’s many blessing.

FYI: our website (www.graceofgodchildren.org) is now up and running. We want to apologize for any inconvenience that it may have caused when our website was not working for the last few weeks. Thank you for being patient with us.