Do Your Kids Hate Going to School? Meet the Kids Who Can't Wait to Go
Los Angeles-based founder of Kenyan school shares Back-to-School lessons U.S. parents can learn from his students
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 8, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Imagine a school in which the students all look forward to being there, gaze at their teachers with admiration and respectful silence, always turn their homework in when it is due, and don't gripe about having to get up at 5 a.m. to be there on time. Sounds like a fantasy, but that's exactly what happens at Eluanta Primary School in Kenya, according to the school's founder, Joseph Oloimooja, a Los Angeles resident who grew up in Eluanta and started the school 25 years ago.
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Oloimooja, who goes by Father Joseph, is a Maasai tribal chief who dresses the part, wearing colorful robes and a beaded skull cap, a reminder of the rural, cattle raising group from which he descends. He believes that the simple school he continues to fund through his nonprofit Kindness Mission organization offers lessons American students, parents and educators may have forgotten.
He can discuss:
- How the 450 boys and girls of Eluanta Primary make do with a single bathroom.
- What the Maasai children can teach their American counterparts about not wasting their educational materials. Students use their pencils and text books until they fall apart.
- Why the children who walk between seven and 20 miles to get to school never arrive late, while American kids frequently have to be cajoled out of bed to catch a school bus.
- What we can do to improve respect for American teachers and classrooms.
- How people can help Eluanta students by donating materials for his backpack project.
ABOUT JOSEPH OLOIMOOJA
Joseph Oloimooja grew up in Eluanta, Kenya, tending cows in his 2,000 person village. After graduating from the University of Nairobi with a degree in theology, he started the first school in his village. To date, 300 students have graduated from the school which combines Maasai and Western curricula. Two of those graduates teach at the school and three have become water engineers helping to solve the village's lack of potable water. Father Joseph is rector of Los Angeles' Good Shepherd Episcopal Church and serves as a chaplain at Kaiser Permanente Hospital.
More information about the primary school can be found at http://www.kindnessmission.org/School.
AVAILABILITY: Los Angeles, nationwide by arrangement and via telephone
CONTACT: Joseph Oloimooja, (323) 687-2167; Email; www.kindnessmission.org
SOURCE Joseph Oloimooja
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