Finton’s Gift of Education: Thank You from Nairobi

Stephanie Baines said a huge “Thank you!” to Finton during assemblies this week for giving the gift of education by sponsoring a child at Green Pastures School in Nairobi.

Stephanie’s parents, Richard and Denise, co-founded the Giraffe Project after a family holiday to Kenya enabling children in the slums around Nairobi to swop their daily activity of scouring rubbish tips for items to sell in order to feed their families or walking to collect water. Pupils such as Rhianna at Green Pastures can now benefit from access to water, food, school books, school uniforms and, most importantly learning, in order to equip them for a better future and open up the opportunity to go on to a university education afterwards. Photos of Rihanna and fellow pupils’ beaming smiles and the words THANK YOU  in capital letters brought the Giraffe story alive to each year group during assemblies throughout the week.

Denise is passionate about education, and ensuring each child is given the best possible start in life, because she knows education is the key to breaking the poverty cycle for the young people they serve. Richard is a senior teacher and has a deep understanding of how education systems work – including the environment in which young people learn best.

Using a packet of gummy bears (yes, gummy bears!), 7 pupils in the Lower School assembly volunteered to help Stephanie demonstrate the reality of how we 7 billion global inhabitants share –  or in fact aren’t sharing – food fairly. Faced with Stephanie’s dilemma of how to share them evenly one pupil volunteered, “Cut them up!”. So Stephanie gave 5 pupils a small piece of one gummy bear, she gave the next pupil a whole gummy bear and asked Reception and Year 1, “Is that fair?”. Somewhat unsurprisingly the children responded, “No!” extremely passionately. She then gave the same pupil 3 more gummy bears and asked “Is that fair now?” Predictably she received a cacophony of replies that it certainly wasn’t! She finally gave one last gummy bear to the same pupil and the empty packet to the last pupil, telling them that this is how life works without invaluable initiatives such as the Giraffe Project ensuring a better spread of resources.

Stephanie said afterwards, “My parents live by the principle that one should not be overwhelmed by big problems, as doing something, no matter how small, is better than nothing. For her family Crane Wygal’s prayer has been key: ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.’ Stephanie taught us all a wonderful lesson about how we can all give and share generously to achieve a fairer outcome for some.

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