KWEST Lesley Churm

2nd March 2023 KWEST – Lesley Churm

We were well entertained by our speaker, Lesley Churm, who gave a very succinct presentation about her charity, the Kenya Watumu Educational Support Trust (KWEST).

Lesley is a retired school teacher who founded her charity after holidaying in Watuma in Kenya and discovering the pressing need in local schools for suitable reading books, which was severely disadvantaging the children's chance of a basic education. There are many languages in Kenya, but all the testing and exams in schools are carried out in English, often a child’s 3rd language. Additionally, classrooms are cramped, many schools have over 80 children per class with one teacher. with class sizes of over 60 pupils being common, with few chairs and desks, and any reading is teacher led to the whole class. Also, extreme poverty, and parents lack of education, meant that there was a complete lack of books in the children’s homes.

To help alleviate this problem, Lesley has founded, and funded, a local Community Library in Watumu, giving children access to books at weekends and school holidays. The books are donated in the UK, and then Lesley and her KWEST charity ship them to Kenya. Our team visit 9 schools a week taking boxes of books from the library to hold a Reading/ literacy session. This gives over  2000 children a week the opportunity to read and develop their literacy.

After a few years, KWEST now supports 9 local schools and employs 4 teachers, with some 2000 local children benefitting weekly from 1000’s of books.

Lesley’s passion and drive were well demonstrated, and her talk raised many questions. After a vote of thanks from Mike Twells, also a retired teacher, President Rob presented Lesley with a cheque for her Charity.                    AC/AR