Hopsyg Junior School

I´m very happy to share this beautiful collection of music from Matt & Madeline, fantastic friends, excellent musicians and dedicated supporters of our disadvantaged kids at Hopsyg charity in Kenya. My favourite two tracks are ´October´ and ´November Guest´, captivating voices and skilled musicians, have a listen. The array of instruments they have mastered in this album is truly impressive. I first met Matt & Madeline in 2015 and since then they have been selflessly leading fundraisers and volunteering for Hopsyg since 2015, visiting Kenya in 2018. Alan
https://mattandmadeline.bandcamp.com/?fbclid=IwAR03F6EeSWgkeNv6L_RiCEn5LOVcV7w8en8AEBBeJD_4GAqdHiqSZkMeRQI

The Aim Was Song, by Matt and Madeline Shugert 11 track album

These had been our plans to build the secondary school in July 2020, such a pity Coronavirus arrived. However, we haven't given up and we plan to build the school in 2021. Find attached our achitecture and fundraising plans to build the secondary school in 2021. Thanks again Stacie and Justine for leading great work.

The Coronavirus has hit the Kenyan economy very hard. Our school was closed on February 18, 2020. Many of our kid´s parent´s were already living in very insecure situations regarding food, income and shelter, now that's much worse, they're livelihoods are more in danger. Many of the parent´s completed casual/part-time labour cleaning houses, labouring on construction sites, etc. It was already difficult to find this work before the quarantine but now its almost impossible. Hopsyg dug deep and coordinated a relief program. See full report

Corona Report 1 Report on Coronavirus Humanitarian Relief at Hopsyg, Kenya Distribution coordinated by: Fred Mulama May 1 and 5, 2020 at Hopsyg Junior School, Bengala, Mshomoroni, Mombasa, Kenya Report compiled by: Alan Coyne Introduction The Coronavirus has hit the Kenyan economy very hard. Ou...

What´s happening on the ground in Kenya regarding the Coronavirus! How are the Kenyan government responding! A great post from Fred (Hopsyg co-founder) about this. P.S. Sorry for the huge lack of posts, thats the problem with being a charitable organisation, administration is not a priority! http://rateyourmpandleader.blogspot.com/2020/05/magufuli-snubs-meeting-held-by-eac_12.html

We are now planning and organising fundraising activities for the building of our secondary school. Alan has now been living in Bogota, Colombia for 1.5 years and through him we have gained some interest/traction here. We are organising our first Colombia fundraiser through his employer. (see our poster)

We are also planning a trip to Kenya in July 2019 with some of our volunteers including Adrian Hosler, Bobby Holliman and Emmy Lynne. After all their hard work organising fundraisers it will be great for them to meet the kids and to see how all their hard work is making a huge difference in these 244 kid´s lives.

poster:

Poster v4.pdf

In 2018, our fundraising continued in Shanghai with Matt and Madeline´s guitar lessons. Additionally, Adrian organised another dinner party, see our volunteering video.

Our Volunteers & Fundraising 2

Short Update:
This year we have had a great year with Hopsyg Junior School.

Matt and Madeline Shughert (volunteers living in Shanghai) visited Kenya last July together with Alan and we bought the two plots of land for our future secondary school (100 meters away from our primary school). We also organised with Fred some essential building renovations, that we couldn´t afford until this recent fundraising. The video below shows the two new plots of land we bought and the renovations we completed in 2018.

Our crowdfunding campaign of Christmas 2018 raised 2,080 euros and combined with Adrian´s dinner party fundraiser in Shanghai this was enough to buy the third plot of land for our new playground. The playground plot is now purchased and our kids are already using it for games of football, PE, children´s games, athletics, etc. Its directly beside the plot of land for our planned secondary school. Our kids and teachers are super proud to have their own playground as they no longer have to share the poorer quality local public playing field, which was difficult to reserve and was also 1.5km away.

Our Work of 2018 In 2018 we had great success. Our biggest goal was to buy a plot of land for our future plans of building our secondary school, we completed this. Our next p...

Alan is back for a visit and he brought two friends from Colorado!! Karibu Sana!
Alan Coyne, the co-founder of HOPSYG has returned to Mombasa with two of his friends he met in Shanghai. Matt and Madeline helped Alan to fundraise enough money to buy the new plot for the secondary school. Asante sana, for all your efforts!
Our kids made sure they had a warm welcome at HOPSYG Junior School.

Bitter Success Story Nr. 1
[Before beginning with one of our bitter success stories, we want to point out that we try to not mention the names of our protagonists to protect them from bullying or worse. Nevertheless, are all stories true and provide a glimpse in the life of our schoolkids and the efforts of HOPSYG.]
In the year 2009 after a careful recruitment exercise of needy and orphan kids in Mshomoroni Kenya, the girl below was one of the kids admitted to Hope orphan pre-school (currently now abbreviated as Hopsyg Junior School). At the age of five years she repeatedly got sick. Having lost her Dad and mum and living with her grandmother who was uneducated, we as a
school took the responsibility of taking her to a hospital to seek medical intervention. Upon arriving at the hospital, the resident doctor immediately suspected her with a serious health condition.
For the first 3 months Madam Fatma voluntarily administered her the medication she needed. One of the pictures below shows our protagonist at 4 years during recruitment. Another shows her at our school with the rest of the preschool students.

The next step was finding a boarding orphanage school.
Hopsyg was at that time and is still a day school and our schoolgirl was not getting a balanced diet at home and also the monitoring of medication during holidays was not promising and she was still pretty weak during that time.
Although the process of getting her admitted to an orphanage was very long, tedious and bureaucratic, finally a break came up in the form of Tumaini Orphanage in Bamburi which provided excellent care including nurses. This was our protagonists home for seven years. Below is a picture of her and Fred at Tumaini children’s home during a family visiting day, most of which she only received visits from Alan, Fred and volunteer Johannes, but not any one from her blood family because of stigmatization and abject poverty.

2017 is the year of another paradigm shift again in our student’s life. Now looking much more mature compared to the little girl we saw during recruitment, as it is evident from the two contradicting pictures below.

At the end of 2016, Hopsyg School, acting as guardians of our protagonist, decided to visit her Aunts and blood Cousins to look into why they had never visited or inquired of how she was doing for almost seven years despite our relentless requests year by year.
Through this effort we managed to bring our student to know her blood family of which she had already forgotten, since she was very young the last time they saw each other. It was only during the last December holiday when she was very exited again in her
life for meeting and being acquainted once again with her long-lost family, but this
impacted negatively to her educational progress. Schools opened Jan 2017 and she
didn’t want to go back to the orphanage, even after getting counselling numerously on the importance of education. Despite all these efforts she still went on to sneak back home without the Orphanage school official permission. Due to the risk, she caused to the school’s management and to her fellow students, the school had no choice but to expel her before any harm befell her albeit the school’s management still made a point to follow up on her health progress. The pictures below of Tumaini Staff talking to our protagonist’s aunt, just after expelling her from the program and dropping her at home.
Now after staying home for one term, Hopysg staff decided to visit the girl where we
realized she felt very connected to her blood family. Also, she accepted to come back to
day school at Hopsyg from which she started off at the age of 4 years, seven years ago.
Pictures below of our grown-up girl in the yellow t-shirt now in class at our program again. We fully support her free education while modelling her future just like the other cases we have. We currently fully sponsor 80 students at our school.

The wet season is over now and the school is attaining full and complete attendance. During wet season it is not possible for all the kids to reach our school because of blocked and flooded roads. Now the kids enjoy being able to play and relax in our schoolyard.