“Is there a better way to bring peace to the world than through the classroom?”

-Bill Molloy, President ATF

In June of 2007 we met students and teachers in the Huruma slum of Nairobi, Kenya. We discovered that teachers are faced with overly crowded classrooms some with over 100 students in a class, antiquated teaching methods and supplies, and many of the children are HIV/AIDS positive and lacking regular medical attention.  Although a few local agencies combine in an outreach and supply a hot meal one day a week, lack of primarily health care and nutrition is astounding. Through this lens, we found that the majority of students are bright, alert, and happy; those in the minority are distant, remote, and ill. It was in the later group that a face of a seven-year-old child in the advanced stage of HIV/AIDS that left an indelible image in our minds. When asked how we could help, we founded the The Africa Teacher Foundation.

Teachers often tend to teach the way they were taught, but these Kenyan teachers are most anxious to embrace all approaches. Change is difficult and sometimes slow but can happen as witnessed by the over 3,000 teachers in 500 schools across Kenya who have been trained by the Africa Teacher Foundation Center for Pedagogy, which is a permanent center in Nairobi run by teachers who have been trained through the institutes.