Rafi­ki Thabo

Wel­come to Rafi­ki Thabo Foun­da­tion

We help young peo­ple in Kenya, Ugan­da & Lesotho reach their full potential 

Rafi­ki Schol­ars: we enable over 150 young peo­ple to access edu­ca­tion at sec­ondary lev­el and beyond at any giv­en time by pay­ing the insti­tu­tion fees on their behalf. 

Rafi­ki Eat Well to Learn: we pro­vide a hot meal every day to 70 sec­ondary school stu­dents in Ugan­da who oth­er­wise would not eat – that’s over 12,000 meals a year. 

Rafi­ki Com­mu­ni­ty: we sup­port the devel­op­ment of schools infra­struc­ture in Lesotho, Kenya, and Ugan­da and oth­er ​‘holis­tic’ projects that sup­port our core aim of increas­ing access to education.

Rafi­ki Scholars

Our core pro­gramme involves pro­vid­ing grants to promis­ing stu­dents (Rafi­ki Schol­ars) to enable them to con­tin­ue their edu­ca­tion at sec­ondary, poly­tech­nic and uni­ver­si­ty lev­els where oth­er­wise they would be unable to afford the fees. This is not child spon­sor­ship – all Schol­ars sup­port­ed by Rafi­ki Thabo have already qual­i­fied for their fur­ther edu­ca­tion by their own mer­its. We sim­ply pro­vide finan­cial assis­tance to enable them to con­tin­ue. All Rafi­ki Schol­ars are nom­i­nat­ed by our in-coun­try com­mit­tees, who con­sid­er each appli­cant ​‘in the round’ rather than sim­ply going by aca­d­e­m­ic achievement.

Along­side this pro­gramme, we aim to take a holis­tic approach to meet­ing the edu­ca­tion­al needs of the indi­vid­u­als we sup­port and we respond to requests from our com­mit­tees in-coun­try. This might include pro­vid­ing funds for extra resources to help them study (e.g. books, sta­tionery etc), sup­port­ing the eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment of their wider house­hold, meet­ing health­care needs or ensur­ing they are in a safe and secure home (e.g. that orphans are housed by relatives).

Rafi­ki ​‘Eat Well to Learn’ – school meals programme

Rafi­ki Thabo Foun­da­tion sup­ports a schools feed­ing pro­gramme at Kamu­gan­guzi Janan Lewan Memo­r­i­al Sec­ondary School, Ugan­da. This pro­gramme was estab­lished in recog­ni­tion of the fact that many stu­dents strug­gle to raise enough mon­ey to pay for school meals and often spend days at school try­ing to learn with no food. Rafi­ki has real­ly been able to make a dif­fer­ence by cov­er­ing the cost of lunch­es for 70 stu­dents who were going hungry.

Rafi­ki Com­mu­ni­ty: Help­ing girls man­age their menstruation

One in 10 African girls skip school dur­ing men­stru­a­tion as they can­not afford to buy dis­pos­able san­i­tary tow­els. Girls in Kenya miss an aver­age of 4.9 days of school each month because of peri­ods, adding up to around 20% of the school year (Duke Glob­al Health Insti­tute). Some drop out entire­ly because they lack access to san­i­tary prod­ucts (UNICEF). Oth­ers are forced to find alter­na­tives such as leaves, ash, or rags which can lead to infec­tion.

Our Ugan­da com­mit­tee raised con­cerns about the girls in their sec­ondary schools who are unable to afford san­i­tary pro­tec­tion. We there­fore worked with a local part­ner in Ugan­da, Days for Girls, to pro­vide train­ing to 189 girls at Kamu­gan­guzi Janan Lewan Memo­r­i­al Sec­ondary School on repro­duc­tive health and reusable san­i­tary kit con­struc­tion. To our sur­prise, 158 boys also attend­ed the train­ing as they want­ed to pass on the knowl­edge to their moth­ers and sis­ters! By pro­vid­ing these girls with the train­ing and kits, we have made it more like­ly that they will com­plete their sec­ondary education.

Rafi­ki Com­mu­ni­ty: Improv­ing the learn­ing environment

In each of our focus coun­tries we have a close link with a rur­al sec­ondary school, via our local com­mit­tee mem­bers. Our link schools are ACK St. Bartholomew’s School in Kenya, Ha Fusi School in Lesotho, and Janan Lewan Memo­r­i­al Sec­ondary School in Uganda.

We sup­port­ed the con­struc­tion of Ha Fusi Sec­ondary School in Lesotho and con­tin­ue to con­tribute to its ongo­ing devel­op­ment. The school is in a remote area and enables local stu­dents to con­tin­ue their stud­ies beyond pri­ma­ry school. The com­mu­ni­ty of Ha Fusi had already drawn up the plans, bought the school site and fenced the com­pound but then funds ran short. Since 2006, Rafi­ki Thabo has been pleased to con­tribute finan­cial­ly and hap­pi­ly, Ha Fusi sec­ondary school is now ful­ly func­tion­al and self-sus­tain­ing.

In 2015, Rafi­ki Thabo merged with the Kazi Min­gi Foun­da­tion, which had sup­port­ed the con­struc­tion and ongo­ing devel­op­ment of ACK St. Barthlomew’s School in Voi, Kenya. We are proud to con­tin­ue KMF’s sup­port to the school’s devel­op­ment and remain respon­sive to the school’s requests for fund­ing. We are cur­rent­ly seek­ing fund­ing to pro­vide the school with new IT equip​ment​.As men­tioned above, we sup­port a school meals pro­gramme and have pro­vid­ed train­ing to girls at Janan Lewan Memo­r­i­al

Sec­ondary School in Ugan­da. We are also sup­port­ing the school’s infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment. In 2016 we sourced fund­ing for the ren­o­va­tion of the girls’ dor­mi­to­ry so that the school’s 300 girls have the option of stay­ing over at school rather than risk­ing attack on their way to and from school every day. We are also sup­port­ing the school to devel­op a pig­gery in order to improve the nutri­tion­al val­ue of the school meals pro­vid­ed, to make the meals pro­gramme more sus­tain­able, and to gen­er­ate addi­tion­al income for the school.