Skills Training and a Brother’s Love Transform a Struggling Student’s Life

In a rural village in Turkana in northwestern Kenya, Lokwaar, 19, is transforming lives in his community by sharing with kids at his Hope Center a valuable, income-generating skill he learned, thanks to an intervention by his brother and Child Champions.

Lokwaar’s story is a testament to the power that skills training has in transforming the lives of kids in hard places.

A man herds camels through the hot, arid landscape in Turkana. (Photo by Jon Taylor Sweet)

His story dates to 2007 when he was registered into the OneChild program. At the time, he was 3 years old and living with his older brother, little sister and their mom in Lotubae Village.

This family of four had no father living with them because their mom’s first husband, who was the father to the older boy, had divorced their mom and left before the boy was old enough to know him.

Their mom then remarried and had Lokwaar and his little sister; however, the marriage ended in divorce, and their mom decided to live alone with her kids.

Joining the Hope Center During a Hard Time

When his mom heard about a Hope Center being set up in their community, she took her kids to get registered into the program. To help the most families possible, Hope Centers normally begin by registering only one child per family, and Lokwaar qualified to join.

At the time of registration, Lokwaar had not started school, but he was able to attend school after joining the Hope Center.

A year after Lokwaar joined the Hope Center, his older brother Loteleng says that their mom died from an illness. She left behind Loteleng, who at the time was in fourth grade; Lokwaar, who had just started school at age 4; and their little sister, who was 2½ years old.

“I am the only one who vividly remembers who our mother was,” Loteleng explains. “Lokwaar vaguely remembers her face and our little sister knows nothing.”

The children were forced to move in temporarily with their grandmother, but because she was elderly and with few resources, Loteleng went to live with one of their late mom’s siblings and his little sister went to live with another, both two villages away.

Their grandmother agreed to have Lokwaar live with her because she was confident that she had just enough resources to take care of him.

Also, by living with his grandmother, Lokwaar could continue attending the Hope Center in her village.

While at the center, he was given school supplies that made it possible for him to go to school. Lokwaar also attended the program at the center every Saturday.

Big Brother Steps Up

Loteleng says that after parting ways with his younger siblings, he always looked forward to school holidays so he could meet up with them.

Loteleng, left, helped guide Lokwaar, right, and his other younger siblings after their mother died. (Photo by Donna Atola)

Whenever they’d meet, Loteleng took it upon himself to check on his siblings’ report cards and encourage them. Having lost their mom, he says he felt obligated to look out for his younger siblings.

“Whenever we met, it was mostly me asking them questions about how life was, about the friends they made and how our relatives were treating them,” Loteleng says. “But one thing I never forgot was to check on their books and their exam results.”

To date, he still checks on their schoolwork and progress.

Apart from checking on their schoolwork, Loteleng would step in to help them with any homework they had during the holidays.

All this went smoothly until he started high school.

He realized that Lokwaar’s performance in fifth grade was declining. However, Loteleng was hopeful that a conversation with his brother would help them come up with a solution to the declining performance.

Hope Center Steps Up

However, they couldn’t establish why Lokwaar was struggling in school. Justus, then a Child Champion at the Hope Center, noticed this as well.

Lokwaar today in front of the Hope Center that helped change his life. (Photo by Donna Atola)

In addition to providing school supplies and paying school fees for the kids, Child Champions in Turkana request academic reports of the kids at the end of every term and organize a meeting with their parents.

The parents come to the Hope Center and with their kids have a discussion with the Child Champions, where they review the academic reports, looking for challenges the kids might be struggling with. Together, they come up with solutions.

The champions also use that chance to find out from the kids whether their dream careers are still on course or whether they might have changed.

Through such forums, some kids learn what subjects they need to work on to pursue their careers, while others choose new career dreams that align better with their areas of strength in school.

Meet another child from Lotubae whose Child Champions intervened to restore her future

During the school terms, the Child Champions also conduct school visits and talk to the kids and their teachers to determine any struggles or strengths the kids have and work to find solutions.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

It was during one of the end-of-term parents’ meetings at the Hope Center that Justus first noticed the issue with Lokwaar’s academic performance.

After several years of Lokwaar’s declining grades and having to repeat the entire academic year of fifth grade, his brother also became worried.

In 2019, after Loteleng completed high school, he settled in Lotubae village and offered to volunteer as a teacher at the Hope Center.

At that time, his biggest worry was that Lokwaar was too old to be in the class he was in.

“I was worried. I worried for my brother. Ever since we were young, my prayer has always been that all of us excel in life. So it broke my heart to see my brother struggle with his academics, and I feared that the more he repeated classes, the more he was being demotivated with education,” Loteleng recalls.

In his observations, Loteleng says that most kids who are made to repeat classes for many years lose interest in school and eventually drop out for fear of being in class with much younger kids.

He didn’t want that for his brother but didn’t know of any other solution.

So, while volunteering at the Hope Center, Loteleng talked to Justus, who advised him and his family to consider taking Lokwaar to a vocational training college.

Realizing His Dream and Pursuing It

Loteleng recalls Justus saying that joining a vocational college might allow Lokwaar to learn a skill he loves and might save him the anguish of repeating classes. It would also allow him to get a job at a young age and save him from dropping out of school with no diploma. At the time Lokwaar, 15, was still in primary school.

When they all discussed this idea with Lokwaar, he got excited about the idea of attending a vocational college. He even told them that he wanted to become a tailor.

The Hope Center scouted for a good college, paid Lokwaar’s fees and registered him into classes there.

After attending the college for a year, Lokwaar came home with good report cards. He was second in his class and had excelled in tailoring.

Before joining the college, Lokwaar was shy and never spoke much. He also struggled to express himself and it took a lot of probing for his teachers or his Child Champions to get a word out of him.

But when Lokwaar came back from college, he was more expressive, confident and happy about himself.

During school breaks, Lokwaar would lease a sewing machine and do tailoring jobs for people in the community.

When he couldn’t afford to lease a machine, he would ask for a chance to work in a tailoring shop. These efforts earned him some money that he’d save for his personal supplies and also to buy food for his grandmother.

A boy at Lotubae Hope Center learns the art of tailoring from Lokwaar. (Photo by Donna Atola)

Sharing His Gift

Lokwaar later approached the Hope Center to see if he could volunteer to train kids there how to tailor.

The Hope Center gave him that chance, alongside another teacher. Today, Lokwaar, who was known as the most silent, shy boy at the Hope Center, trains 14 kids.

“I love tailoring because I am happy when I see people dressed in clothes that I have made,” he says. “I also enjoy seeing other kids at the center learn to tailor and am overjoyed when I see them happy when I teach them.”

Lokwaar hopes to one day own a sewing machine so he can set up a tailoring shop at the market.

Lokwaar’s newfound confidence and vocation highlight how a child’s life can be transformed by loving family members and Child Champions working together.

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