African Promise Update from Charles Coldman - Africa and Asia Venture

African Promise Update from Charles Coldman - Africa and Asia Venture

This time five years ago Charles Coldman (Kenya, Feb-May 2003) had just come to the end of his four month placement as an AV volunteer based in the isolated rural community of Kasigau, Kenya.

Fast forward to the present day and Charles, now 24, is the founder and Kenyan-based project director of a small charity working to enhance education in the primary schools of the five villages that comprise the very same community. Indeed, these are exciting times for Charles and the charity as it is about to embark on its second major school redevelopment project.

The roots of the charity, African Promise, can be traced back to Charles' time as an AV. As he tells us, "I was inspired by my life changing experience in Kasigau and decided I wanted to give something back to a community to which I had become so attached". Before Charles left Kasigau he made an ambitious promise to the Headmaster of the primary school in the village where he had been based:  that he would return to give the village a better school, to give its children a brighter future.

That was a promise that Charles was able to keep. In October 2006, having graduated from Exeter University and having spent the previous eight months raising around £20K, Charles returned to the village. For five months he lived with a local family in their traditional mud hut and led a project to radically transform the village primary school. With the overwhelming support of the local community the school was transformed beyond recognition.

That experience led to Charles founding African Promise and he is now determined to help transform the education, lives and futures of hundreds more Kenyan children through the development of other existing schools.

"Seeing so many children's education transformed by one school development made me look beyond Jora to other schools in the same community. The same need was there too and it was clear to me that not only had I found something I was passionate about but also a direct and effective way of giving lasting to help to hundreds of Kenyan primary school children.

I launched African Promise at the start of this year with the aim of transforming four more primary schools over the next three years, for the benefit of 1,700 pupils - and children for generations to come".

The immediate focus of the charity's work is on enhancing teaching and learning environments through the development and construction of classrooms and other infrastructure including libraries, administration buildings and sanitation facilities.

At a time when the charity is embarking on its next major school redevelopment project Charles, more than ever, is looking for support from volunteers who can assist with raising the profile of the charity, with fundraising or by joining the African Promise team in Kenya.

Visit  www.africanpromise.org.uk to find out more and to donate funds.

Or contact Charles directly at info@africanpromise.org.uk.

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