By Ján Michalko
(Victoria’s story was part of the 2020 series on alumni association leaders in Kenya prepared by inHive in collaboration with Future First Kenya to commemorate the start of Term 3 of the school year, which was cancelled due to the COVID -19 pandemic)
One of the many things that became part of the our ‘new normal’ in the time of COVID are apologies; or to be more precise, our work from home routines have forced many of us to apologise – for noise. ‘Sorry for the drilling – my neighbour is fixing his back yard.’ ‘Sorry if the doorbell rings, I am expecting a delivery.’ And – one of my favourites – ‘Sorry for the barking, I have a dog.’
The last apology marks the start of my zoom call with Victoria, who is the chairperson of the Mugoiri Old Girls Association (MOGA). Our Lady of Consolata Mugoiri Girls High School is a national government sponsored boarding school not too far from Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi, where Victoria’s mother had wanted to study herself. While she was unable to do so, she was very keen to send her daughter there, despite the fact that Victoria felt perfectly happy in her day school in Nairobi.
Boarding schools in Kenya are highly regarded by many parents seeking to afford their children the best chance for success; but Victoria did not find the transition into her new school either wanted or easy. Despite the great reputation of Mugoiri Girls’ High, she admits with much bravery that she was probably fighting with depression when she was there.
“Now, years later, when I look back at the time, I began to wish I had somebody who would have mentored me to come out of the depression and focus on my studies.”
Victoria is now a mentor to girls that she wished she had herself.
“Looking back and seeing the girl I was back then, I desire to go back and reach out to somebody who is going through depression like I did back then or any other difficulty.”
From dreams of being a lawyer to caring for children
Victoria is very well placed to mentor young women, as in her professional life, she works for an NGO called Kickstart Kids International that supports children in the care system. Together with her colleagues they have been advising organisations on how to transform childcare from the institutional format into so-called alternative care mechanisms such as kinship care, which seeks to avoid children’s separation from their families and long term institutionalization.
While the stories of abandonment or neglect are the first to come to my mind as Victoria tells me of her job, what is also challenging is saying goodbye.
“The challenging part for us as well was the separation. It would happen every time we would reintegrate children. You see, as a human being, you naturally get attached to them. The separation is usually also pretty difficult for both the children and staff.
Her career path into her role was not so straightforward, as is often the case. Inspired by the hit TV series Law and Order, as a young girl, Victoria dreamt of being a lawyer. Whilst she ended up studying Human Resources, her dream is still alive as she will soon be enrolling for her law degree to add on to her basic legal studies qualifications and will specialize in children’s rights and protection.
Her detour away from the legal profession was partially tied to her time at Mugoiri, where mentorship from older girls could have helped her to overcome depression and maintain higher grades, which are required in Kenya for students to pursue a law degree at a university.
Thankfully, she still managed to meet the cut off grades to join University. Later on whilst studying HR, she discovered that she could perform better when she emerged as one of the top students in her class of over 100 students.
But the challenges that she experienced at the school, did not mean she was not happy to get involved years later, and restart the alumni association.
The alumni association 2.0
When Victoria was at school, there were no visits from Old Girls, despite the fact that the alumni association was officially registered and launched in the 1990s– as Victoria and her fellow Old Girls learnt years later, when they were gearing up to launch the association.
Her re-engagement with the school came on the back of a social media call to help a Mugoiri student with her fees.
“I took up the issue and I rallied a few of my old friends from the school and we were able to raise the money to send her to school. “
But providing the fees was not enough and Victoria and her friends made sure the girl was supported beyond the financial means and so she visited her at the campus. Rallied by the principal, Victoria was convinced that she could no longer wait for others to organise the former students to help the school, but she had to take action. She brought together girls from the school and formed a steering committee which focused on this endeavour.
And what better way to excite her fellow Old Girls than to celebrate 80 years of the school, which the alumni commemorated by fundraising for and donating eight cookers for the home science lab.
The journey to form the association, however, took an unexpected delay, as the Old Girls had to find the original leading members, who stood at the birth of the association decades ago. Without any social media presence or up to date contact details, finding the right people and the paperwork was a challenge, which took some time, but which was a growing experience for all involved as well. One of the old girls who was part of the steering committee made a breakthrough and managed to trace the 3 officials required for the revival of the association.
This experience taught Victoria an important lesson on how to manage the association better this time around:
“We are very careful to make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes. One of the things that caused that dormancy is not involving the school a bit more strongly in the activities of the association. We have the principal sitting as one of the committee members and then we also maintain a physical file with the records at the school as well.”
Filling a gap that parents or teachers cannot
Looking into the future, MOGA has great plans in store. From updating the constitution and growing its membership, registering a Savings & Credit Cooperative, the association also wants to build on the achievements and successes to date, such as the mentorship programme or a bursary fund for the students where so far approximately USD$120,000 has been raised to cater for scholarships to needy students.
But the association is also helping other alumni, for example through a Welfare fund for fellow Old Girls, who have found themselves in a tough spot. With the rising unemployment and economic challenges caused by the COVID pandemic, the need for the Old Girls to help each other will only increase.
Growing in strength and in numbers, Victoria hopes the association will continue to help many more girls like herself when she was young, who would benefit from having people to talk to, who are not their parents or their teachers, but who understand them.
“The girls are stuck in a place where they can’t talk to their parents and they can’t talk to their teachers either. And we kind of become an ‘in-between’ – a neutral face -who I can reach out to and who can understand what I am going through.”
And as she tells me, the need is great. With every mentoring session they run at the school, the demand from students grows exponentially, showing how having an alumni association is a really worthwhile endeavour for any school.
