The Mango Tree Girls Secondary School is an educational project developed by The Mango Tree Orphan Support Trust – Kenya (TMT-Ke), which is a non-governmental organisation operating in Homabay County, western Kenya. This county has the highest rates of HIV and AIDS in Kenya and lies along the shores of Lake Victoria. Since 2006, TMT-Ke has provided educational, health and sustainable livelihoods support to orphans and their guardian families, as well as funding water and sanitation infrastructure projects in local primary and secondary schools. TMT-Ke adopts an empowerment approach encouraging community ownership and independence by promoting and encouraging community action and economic regeneration. TMT-Ke strives to improve access to, and the quality of primary, secondary, vocational & tertiary education in Homabay County, with the objective of effecting an increase in attendance, retention and performance of orphaned and vulnerable children, especially for girls.

After twelve years of promoting girls’ education within The Mango Tree community, the number of girls who succeed in continuing into further education at tertiary colleges and universities in Kenya remains low. It is widely recognized that an educated girl will marry later, she will have less children and her children are likely to obtain a better start in life. While this is true, helping a girl stay in education and reach
their highest academic potential is a big challenge and even greater in the case of orphaned and vulnerable girls. After improving the numbers of orphaned girls completing primary school and transiting into secondary school through our Alternative Family Based care model, we still had the problem of higher incidences of pregnancies and drop outs among those who then joined day secondary schools. The absence of parental care, the long distances to school, the lack of basic needs, the challenges of adolescence and the lure of malicious men who take advantage of the situation of the girls becomes too tough for thirteen to seventeen-year-old girls. This caused us to prioritize boarding school for our girls thus leading us to greater success. It is from this experience that we wish to build the girls’ boarding secondary school
in order to take girls education a notch higher. This time not just for the orphans but for the entire community.