Valley View Academy

Ballet class at Valley View Academy in Mathare, Nairobi.

A collection of slums in Nairobi goes by the name of Mathare Valley; the oldest, MATHARE, contains approximately 150,000 people. With that many people, there are also children living there. There is also gang violence and children get siphoned into those gangs.

The people who live in Mathare and MATHARE VALLEY are unimaginably poor. The housing is ramshackle and sanitation practically nonexistence. It makes a tough world for families to try to negotiate.

However, into this area came a school, VALLEY VIEW ACADEMY, which evolved in the late 1970s from a tutorial program set up for dropouts from the public schools. Because so many children of various ages and amounts of schooling started to arrive for educational assistance, a formal school program was developed geared to the needs of the students from Mathare, who had needs beyond that which the government schools could serve. Valley View now serves more than 1000 students. Besides the educational program, the school also engages in such sports as football, volleyball, netball, and basketball.



None of the developing educational program at Valley View developed without outside help. Gary Muldoon from the US has raised sufficient fund to help build the school's library. He and his wife are in the process of collecting more than 1500 books and have plans to help the school build a computer lab. Mr. Muldoon has been documenting his progress on his twitter page, BOOKS ARE POWER.

Mr. Muldoon has discussed the reasons for his involvement, "The main reason why we are so passionate about continuing this project was the reaction of the students and gratitude of the faculty. The look of amazement on the faces of the students and big grins when we told them this is YOUR library were more than enough to make us want to do more."

In order to visualize the hope that Valley View Academy brings to its students, watch this video made of photos about the school and the area it serves:

Thanks for information provided by this article: http://thepollinationproject.org/grants-awarded/gary-muldoon-books-are-power/.

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