100 Women: The English girls' school reborn in a
Nairobi slum
By Jenny Norton BBC News
- 20 December 2016
In 2005 Judy Webb closed down
the private girls' school her family had run in the English countryside for
nearly 60 years. As she packed away a stack of unused school uniforms, she had
no idea that a decade later they would be worn by a class of Kenyan children in
a new school, named after hers, in one of the poorest parts of Nairobi.
The story of the two schools
begins in November 2013 when the BBC World Service launched its first list of
100 inspiring and influential
women around the world.
As the first female commander
of an all-male field force unit in the British army, Judy Webb was one of the
women on the list.
On top of her trail-blazing
military career, she had spent nearly 20 years running Rossholme Girls' School
in southern England, before turning it into a thriving country guest house
business.
The BBC invited all the 100
Women of 2013 to a conference in London, which is where Judy met another name
on the list - a Kenyan student called Joyce Aruga.
Although they were from
different generations, different countries and with very different life
experiences, the two women hit it off immediately.
"She was resilient,
positive and cheerful," Judy remembers "and she was a very good
observer".
Joyce, who was 27 at the time,
had a back story quite as remarkable as Judy's.
The youngest of 11 children,
she was born into a poor family on the remote Mageta Island in Lake Victoria in
1986 - the same year Judy Webb took over running Rossholme School.
"None of my elder
brothers and sisters got an education," she says. "My parents
couldn't afford to pay the school fees."
At the age of 14 she was
forced to become the third wife of a much older man, but - determined to get an
education - she ran away from her husband.
With the help of a children's
charity she got a place at secondary school, and funded her studies working as
a maid.
By the time Joyce and Judy met
in London, Joyce was one year into a teacher training degree at the Kenyan
Methodist University in Nairobi - helped by a sponsor from a church in the
United States.
"I couldn't believe that
I, Joyce a village girl, was going to get on a plane and go to London,"
she remembers. "I had only seen [planes] in drawings. How will I board
this thing that flies in the air?"
After the conference Joyce
spent the weekend in Somerset with Judy and her family. She told them about her
dream of one day setting up her own school in Kenya.
Judy asked Joyce if she could
make use of the uniforms left over from Rossholme school.
"She tried one on
herself," Judy remembers. "She liked it so much wanted to wear it on
the flight home!"
Image caption Rossholme
Education Centre helps children whose parents can’t afford to send them to
school
For the next three years the
two women kept in touch by email, and in July Joyce wrote to say that not only
had she successfully graduated with a teaching degree, but she had also opened
up a small day-school in Mathere, a vast slum on the edge of Nairobi.
Another email followed showing
a tiny group of tiny children, all proudly wearing Judy's blue and yellow
school uniforms, and standing in front of the blue painted gates of their new
school - the Rossholme Education Centre.
Joyce is starting small, with
10 pupils aged from 8 months to four years old.
"I found them by walking
door to door, looking for kids who should have been in pre-school," she
says. "When I asked their parents why they weren't in school, they said
they couldn't afford the fees."
Joyce has been teaching her
first class for free, but she's fundraising to expand, and hopes to be able to
provide primary and secondary education for up to 100 disadvantaged children
over the next two years.
"Because of the hardship
I went through in life, I made a promise to myself that I would always help the
poor and vulnerable," says Joyce. "I try to give some hope to those
who have lost it."
Joyce says that taking part in
the BBC's 100 Women series helped her expand her horizons.
"I learned there are
challenges everywhere," she says. "It doesn't matter what we have
gone through, we can still stand up and fight for our rights."
Back in Somerset, Judy has
also started fundraising, hoping people who remember Rossholme Girls School,
will be inspired to support the new Rossholme Education Centre in Nairobi.
'I'm very hopeful we will
succeed,' says Judy. 'And if we do it will be something that was entirely
brought together by 100 Women.'
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