STORY OF THE SCHOOL
Lamu is a unique, special and magical place... The cradle of Swahili culture, a place where the world stops, where there simply are no cars, just donkeys and boats, and where you can find Twashukuru Nursery School.
A school where 28 children have found a home, a family, and opportunity in life, a future, and a place that allows them to play, laugh, cry, run, learn, fall, and pick themselves up again... The school with its 28 students and its founder, is one of those stories that allow you to reconcile with life. One of those stories that show how one day, what we have been looking for, arrives; one day where all of our efforts are rewarded; one day where all of our dreams come true. And that day began in 2008, when Omar returned to his island, Lamu, after spending more than 10 years living in The United States of America, where he fled in search of a better life.
When he returned he realised the levels of poverty in which his people lived, and decided he wanted to do something for them and for him. He started working on the awareness and respect for the environment by recycling with a group of women and their children. Plastic had arrived on the island but not how to manage its devastating effects on the environment. The levels of dirt and contamination were high, and alarming. And so they began to clean the beaches and transforming plastic bags into rope which then, they sold. And while the women worked on the recycling, Omar built a school out of the plastic bottles he had previously picked up from the beaches so that the children could study while their mothers worked. Due to the fact that mothers took their children to work.
This was how it all began. The start of a social project that Omar has continued during all these years with his efforts and hard work, just like he did when he was a musician in America, the same man that now needs your help to be able to give these children a better life, and to be able to maintain the sustainability of the project.
This love for the children, the love that Omar holds for his people, his responsibility and solidarity, have given him the strength to build and maintain this simple, small, but vital school for its 28 students that come to study and eat everyday loaded with backpacks full of family drama and absent of books.