A Blossoming Partnership: Bedford Academy and Bishop Okiring

Community Development Officer Michael Cox from Bedford Academy blogs about his school's partnership with Bishop Okiring in Kenya.

Michael travelled to Kenya with two students to meet his partner school in July 2011. The story of their journey aired on the BBC News Channel on 22 October and can be watched on the World Class website. 

One of my favourite projects we have undertaken together is a project called 'Send my Sister to School'. 

This was particularly pleasing to me as it was entirely student led by our 6th form at Bedford Academy. The campaign is put together by Global Campaign for Education and allows students to take the lead to promote awareness of female education within their own school and the surrounding community. Our students produced a video and a banner and organised a meeting with our local MP. I took the banner to Bishop Okiring with me to share the campaign as Mr Okadie is very passionate about female education. Every student at Bishop Okiring signed the banner as did staff. This became a powerful symbol for the project as it showed directly the impact of education to both boys and girls from an economically challenged community.

When I met Mr Okadie in London at the World Olympic Dreams conference I promised him I would try and learn Swahili. I am fortunate in the fact that Bedford is one of the most multi-cultural towns in the UK and we have several students from East Africa who speak Swahili who have been able to help me learn. I delivered a speech in Swahili to the gathered students, staff and community when I visited Bishop Okiring and the feedback was fantastic. This inspired me to learn more and to pass it on to my students. We now devote part of our International Schools enrichment directly to learning Swahili and all the students who attend love learning it!

When I visited Bishop Okiring Mr Okadie told me the importance of learning English to his students. Most students first language is their local dialect and therefore English can be difficult. Bishop Okiring students have big dreams and aspirations, most of which will require a grasp of English. He told me that our visit will inspire his students to learn more English and that working with our School will push them all with their studies. We have started to achieve this through regular student contact and hope to continue with phone calls, emails and hopefully through SKYPE. A prime example of the success of this partnership is Kenyan student Eglah, whose English has improved fantastically since her visit to Bedford Academy!

A high point of my visit to Bishop Okiring was the exchange of our culture boxes! These contained 10 items of local or national significance to our respective cultures. It was very interesting to see the difference in the items and how they were used in everyday life. Each culture box included a 'mystery' item which each School had to guess. Bedford Academy’s mystery item was an egg cup which completely baffled staff and students alike! It was interesting to see that all Bishop Okiring items were hand-made and very practical where our items were mainly plastic and slightly frivolous!

Another curriculum project we did this year was fairtrade. Each school made a video to intrroduce their thoughts on Fairtrade and what it means to them. The videos have since been exchanged and will be used to promote Fairtrade across the Academy for Fairtrade Fortnight/World Fairtrade day 2012.

Michael Cox

Community Development Leader

Bedford Academy