NEW WHITE HOUSE ACADEMYP.O. Box 754, 80300 VOI, KENYATel. 0724 567 700/0723 345820

newwha@hotmail.com

About us

The New White House Academy is a boarding primary school with an enrolment of 240 pupils from Nursery to class 8. It has 14 trained P1 teachers and 20 nonteaching staffs all of them accommodated in the school premises.

This school was started by Mama Annedore Biberstein, who has been visiting Kenya since 36 years and travelled to most of the areas in this beautiful country. After seeing the post-election violence and knowing from experience what it means to be poor, she had the strong desire to help people in Kenya. After a considerable amount of soul searching, she came to the wisest conclusion to invest in education to the poor and less fortunate. She formed in May 2008 the association KENYAN CHILDREN HELP, together with her longtime friend Hanna Zbinden. The headquarters are based in Switzerland, more information on www.kenyanchildrenhelp.ch. Mama Annedore as she is known to the people in the area is the chairperson and founder of this association.

Our aims and what we achieved

Initially “The White House Academy” was built in Mackinnon Road. Unfortunately it was discovered in 2010, when she moved to Kenya, that the manager, who had been employed there at this school, mismanaged the funds. After talking to honorable Mzee Eliud Timothy

Mwamunga, we were able to lease the place of the former coast high school and moved the school under the name New White House academy to Voi, Kenya. In January 2015, we eventually managed to buy the school compound!

The district education officer, Mr. K. Machora was always a big help to us and through his office the school is now registered by the ministry of education. We appreciate all the efforts coming from this office to improve the standard of our school. The school is registered as a private school, but in real it is a charity project and cannot be compared with other private schools. Some of the objectives of the school are:

- To give needy children the opportunity to get better education and serve as a rescue center for orphans and discriminated children.

- Help learners explore their talents through sports, drama, music and gymnastics

- Inculcate positive discipline in learners in a friendly manner.

- Help learners to achieve their educational dreams: - joining Secondary schools.

- To make significant impact by giving the best service as we endeavor to maximally exploit our potentials.

The school’s mission is teaching, training, and impacting knowledge and skills to learners to fit in this challenging world, so that they can help themselves and their families afterwards. The target we have in education is to help the less fortunate learners by providing quality education through well-wishers donors and sponsors.

Our school does not charge fees to the poor parents; it only depends on sponsors and donors from the Kenyan Children Help

association in Switzerland and in the meantime even from well-wishers in Germany and Canada.

In the dining hall the children take porridge in the morning, tea and homemade bread at 11 a.m., lunch at 1 p.m. and dinner at 6.30 p.m. We look that their food is not only healthy, but also enough. Growing children can eat a lot!!! And once every month we celebrate the birthdays of all the children born in this months, with a huge birthday cake and juices, a lot of singing and clapping-

Every year, we had to renovate and build. Now we have a kindergarten and a pre-unit for the youngsters and 8 classrooms for the children learning in the classes 1 to class 8. We are more than just happy that every time, when we were afraid that we wouldn’t be able to manage all the challenges, kind people assisted and like that we indeed managed to do all the necessary buildings. It seems that the universe likes what we are doing for the children!But we didn’t only manage to do the buildings; our school is the best in the whole division, academically, in handball and in drama.

And they are not only the best in Voi county, they represented the coast region in handball in Machakos, where the girls were beaten by a Nairobian club by one goal, but ended up to be the 2nd best team in whole Kenya and the boys were position 4. That means our children wrote history already. Our drama team represented the Coast region in Nakuru.Are we happy, yes we are happy and proud!!

This is one of our classrooms, with a group of children, singing for visitors. Most of them are coming from German speaking countries.They are always very happy when sponsors or donors are coming to visit and also proud that most of them have a basic knowledge in German. Anthony Muthoka, a German teacher from Voi, comes on Sunday afternoons to teach this language.

What we still need

We don’t have running water and it is very expensive to buy water all the time and have brought it to the school by trucks. A borehole could be the best solution. At the beginning the idea of a borehole didn’t please us, everybody told us, that the water which you can get, is salty, but it can be cleaned. A geological survey was already done and shows that we can find water at our place, even though it is necessary to dig at least 100 meters. How wonderful it could be to have enough water and plant our own vegetables, the children already promised to help with that.At the same time we would like to introduce computer classes so that our pupils could become computer literate and for that we require a computer room and about 20 computers to commence this exercise.

Our class eight pupils will be sitting for their national examination this year and we expect an excellent performance from them due to their hard work and discipline. Since a majority of them come from needy families, some of them are orphans; we foresee a scenario whereby they might end up in the streets half-baked if we don’t build a secondary school for them. We therefore, through the help of donors and well-wishers, intend to start a non-profit making secondary school for them within our compound so that they can be sure to continue with their secondary education and achieve their life goals.We are appealing with all humility as matter of urgency for financial support to commence the construction exercise now. Please open your hearts and help us with a donation. Our children need to attend a Secondary school, so that they can choose a profession and through that, they have their future life in their own hands.

The future of the school

This is secured through the New White House Academy Trust, which is about to be registered very soon and shall help that the school remains what it is – a place to help the less privileged children in Kenya and give them a home at the same time.

We plead to you to open your hearts for the children of our school; nobody can choose where he is born.

And as Nelson Mandela said “Education is the most powerful weapon which can be used to change the world.” We hope that our children can help to change their country Kenya for the better.

Annedore Biberstein Moses GichuhiDirector Head teacher

Bank name and branch: Barclays Bank Voi. Account name:New White House Academy, Voi, Account no 2029313485

Spendenkonto KENYAN CHILDREN HELP CREDIT SUISSE CH-8070 ZürichPC 80-500 Konto- 973657-51 IBAN CH73 0483 5097 3657 5100 0

BIC/SWIFT CRESCHZZ80A