Mountrath Community School hosts Kenyan Ambassador
Mountrath Community School was honoured to host the first Londiani Kenya network forum recently. The school along with 2 other Irish schools are linked to an Irish based charity called “Friends of Londiani” to 3 schools in Londiani,
Kenyan Ambassador, her Excellency Catherine Muigai Mwangi with Mountrath Students.
Kenya. Mountrath Community School is linked with Londiani Girls Academy, Moate Community School with Moi Sorget and Killinarden Community School with Kapchaplanga. 30 Students from each of the 3 schools attended workshops on 4 of the 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s).
(In September 2000, 189 world leaders met at the United Nations headquarters in New York to sign the Millennium Declaration. The governments of the world agreed to unite in a common effort to eliminate, through the implementation of the 8 MDG’s, the scourge of poverty and hunger, work towards achieving gender equality, fight environmental degradation and reverse the advancement of HIV/AIDS, while improving access to education, health care and clean water, all by 2015).
As Mountrath Community School was the venue for the forum, the “Kenyan School Committee” wrote to, and invited, her Excellency Catherine Muigai Mwangi the Kenyan Ambassador to Ireland to our school for the event. The layout for the day included workshops on the MDG’s and an African Drumming workshop.
Each of the link schools presented workshops on the MDG’s.
Moate Community School presented MDG 2 (Achieve Universal Primary Education-giving all children the opportunity to start and finish primary school).
Mountrath Community School presented MDG 3 (Promote gender equality and Empower women).
Killinarden Community School presented MDG 6 (Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases).
Friends of Londiani (FOL) presented MDG 8 (develop a global partnership for development-promote greater co-operation among all nations with special concern for fairer deals for poor countries, in trade, aid, debt, new technologies).
Her Excellency the ambassador attended each of the workshops and was impressed by the students’ knowledge of the different MDG. The day to her signified her hope for the future and her faith in the youth of today.
The close of the day was marked by the planting of a cherry blossom tree, the students choose this tree as it will bloom around spring time every year, which will remind them
of the visit of our Kenyan visitors to the school. Grainne Delaney and Christopher Dooley presented the Ambassador her Excellency Catherine Muigai Mwangi with a candleholder also made out of cherry blossom. Earlier on in the day Grainne and Christopher presented the ambassador and the Teachers from the other link schools with a pin depicting both Kenyan and Irish flags. The students on the Kenyan School Committee link proudly wear their pins on their uniform each day.
