SCOPE International

Description

Schools Creating Opportunities through Projects that Empower (SCOPE) works with more than 54 school communities in Western Kenya to create an empowerment model of community development that focuses on schools as the catalyst for change.

• SCOPE works with school communities, students, parents, teachers and community stakeholders.
• In the Denver-metro area, SCOPE collects, repairs, organizes, packs, and ships fiction, non-fiction, and reference books to fill English libraries in Kenyan schools and communities. The creation of these libraries is usually the beginning of the relationship between SCOPE and communities, and opens up more opportunity for collaboration on different types of projects in the future.
• SCOPE hires project coordinators and field workers recruited from the ranks of teachers and administrators in local school communities.
• School communities form leadership teams to assess the needs of the community, identify resources and talents available, organize teams of community trainers, create implementing groups for projects, and finds potential partners to work with (i.e., government agencies, committed NGO’s, Rotary Clubs, individual donors, etc.).
• Some of the subjects taught to community trainers at SCOPE workshops include:
• High yield agriculture technology
• Construction of low cost water filters
• Micro-credit use to start small local businesses
• Flameless cooker construction
• Soap making
• The trainers return to their communities and, with the assistance of SCOPE field workers, begin teaching parents, teachers, students and community members. Eventually, they conduct workshops for other school communities, churches and community groups which share a common interest. The trainers teach people how to start businesses, create jobs, and improve the health of the community.