Juliet Otieno, Rose Akinyi & Miriam Akoth in Nairobi’s Kayole estate.
Rose Akinyi, a mother to three girls, is grateful to Eneza Education for innovating Shupavu291. Together with her daughters, they live in a single room house in Nairobi’s Kayole estate. We recently had a chat with her and her daughter Miriam.
Miriam Akoth did her Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) in 2018, achieving a grade C. She was a student at St. Timothy Kianjeru School in Embu, Central Kenya. Since she was a boarding student, Shupavu291 was her study companion during school holidays. She says that before she discovered Shupavu291, her grades ranged between D and D-. Shupavu291 helped her improve from grade D, despite her mother not being able to afford all the required textbooks.
This changed after she heard of Shupavu291 on one of the popular local radio stations, Radio Citizen. Miriam used to borrow her mother’s basic phone whenever she was on holiday, and would revise the difficult topics they had learnt at school.
She even introduced her siblings, Ruth in form three and Esther in class six. They came up with a time-plan for sharing their mother’s basic smartphone for revision. Shupavu291 helped Ruth grasp Math formulas which she had a challenge of forgetting. Her performance in Math and Sciences has greatly improved. She recently scored 53% in Maths and 64% in Chemistry.
Miriam also introduced her friend Venessa to Shupavu291. She says she loves competing with other students for the daily Top 10 most active students’ list. “It encourages me to keep revising”, she said. She also loves using Ask-A-Teacher, because she gets her academic questions answered by teachers.
Rose Akinyi, their mother, a casual worker at Nairobi’s Industrial Area says that she likes Shupavu291 because it keeps children busy and out of trouble. She also appreciates the fact that Shupavu291 is accessible on any phone. “My children can access learning even without the internet”, she said.
The price of Shupavu291 is another factor that Rose Akinyi appreciates. Being a single parent, she has to squeeze the little resources she gets from her casual work to educate her three daughters and meet their basic needs. She said that two shillings a day for unlimited revision, compared to buying extra books and paying tuition fee, is a small fee to pay.
Rose Akinyi also appreciates that Eneza Education helped her in paying part of her daughters’ school fees. Her daughters were beneficiaries of our merit based school fees campaigns in 2017. She has also introduced two other parents to Shupavu291 for their children’s academic improvement.
Miriam Akoth, Rose’s daughter is now pursuing a diploma in Information Technology at Kiriri Women’s’ University. She aspires to become a journalist. We are proud of Miriam, and believe that she will achieve her dreams. You can also subscribe to Shupavu291 by dialing *291# from any Safaricom phone for KES 2 a day, and access unlimited revision lessons and quizzes.
About the author:
Juliet Otieno is the Communications Associate at Eneza Education. She has a journalism and Public Relations background, blogs mostly about the girl child and women, and loves good books.