School built in a few weeks: an emergency school to save slum children from the effects of the corona pandemic

How can children in overcrowded slum schools maintain social distance?

Access to education is a big challenge to children living in the informal settlements in the cities. The Covid 19 Pandemic has exposed the situation of these forgotten groups because of the much talked about social distancing that is easier to talked about but practicing is near impossible for the young school children in these places.

In Mathare slums, Nairobi, PBF takes care of various projects aimed at children, young people and women. These are exposed to incredible risks. Apart from the overcrowded unhygienic environment , lack of basic needs like food, water, sanitation, shelter, and safety are everyday challenges.

Our programs are critical to providing a safe place for our main target groups, children ages 6-15 and teenagers ages 17-25.

Covid 19:
The current corona pandemic has added even more misery to an already terrible situation. The slum school children stayed away from school for a full year and cannot resume classes because their former schools cannot reopen due to strict Covid 19 restrictions that limit overcrowding.

Our representative in Mathare saw this coming and asked PBF to consider a temporary school structure outside the slums so that the children could study in a spacious environment. With an urgent appeal to Dr. Peter Bachmann, we have acquired a piece of land and currently, we are setting up the place. The fabricated shipping container classrooms have been delivered.

The latest step has equiping it with furniture and other teaching materials and starting with the most affected children from the slums who have stayed out of school for close to one year since the pandemic was declared.

With this innovative approach, we hope that our school can aquire more shipping container classes to fill the void faced by these children.

NOTE: The 4 classrooms with a capacity of 15 children per class have been done from 2, 40 ft. shipping containers at a cost of $ 9000 per container. The fabrication takes 21 days to be ready. This makes it very appropriate to respond to such emergencies that could not be predictable. We are so thankful to the friends and supporters of the Peter Bachmann Foundation. The foundstion funds slum children school feeding for children whose parents cannot afford basic meals, sanitary pads for the adolescent girls as well as sports materials like footballs , tricots and balls.