Overcoming language barriers in Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp to improve children’s learning outcomes

 

In Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, the innovative “Tasfiri” education project, is currently being implemented. The primary goal is to improve learning outcomes for refugee learners, especially young learners, who are not competent in English or Swahili, the two languages of instruction in Kenya’s education system. The project finds ways to bring home languages into the system and puts refugee parents/carers at the centre of driving that change. It also focuses on psychosocial support to improve learning outcomes, while stories of change are told by the refugees themselves, especially in video form.

The Kakuma refugee camp is located in the North-western region of Kenya and was established in 1992. It is home to about 250,000 refugees, accounting for 43% of all refugees in Kenya. Among the refugees living in the camp are people who have fled insecurity, civil strife and violence in South Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. More recently, 800 refugees have been arriving per week in the camp due to climate change induced drought and food insecurity in East Africa. The majority of the new arrivals are children.

With the majority of refugees into Kakuma not conversant in English or Swahili, a large number of children are not going to school, which has led to poor primary school completion rates, and low transition rates to secondary school.

The Kakuma mother tongue project, or “Tasfiri” (meaning “Translate” in Swahili), was developed to help lower primary refugee learners to learn in their home languages. The project provides educational radio content in those languages for lower primary school learners. Parents also play a role, with the project producing material to enhance parental engagement in the learning process, equipping parents with skills to support young learners.

The Norwegian Refugee Council's Better Learning Programme (BLP) is also involved, developing the skills of teachers and community facilitators so they can address both their own psychosocial needs and those of the learners in their classes. As part of this, mentor teachers have been trained to integrate psychosocial support into the classroom as part of everyday learning.

Porticus has been involved in the implementation of an education programme focused on embedding Social and Emotional Learning in the refugee education system since 2020. Working with multiple partners, including FilmAid Kenya, Porticus seeks to improve learning outcomes for refugee children in Kenya. FilmAid Kenya’s aims include generating evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of using mother tongue languages for instruction in lower primary schools. This evidence is used to advocate and persuade others, including implementers, funders and the Ministry of Education, to follow the same approach.

One of the results of the Tasfiri project is a video made by refugee content producers. The producers were taught by FilmAid Kenya so they could help share stories of change themselves. The video spotlights how the Tasfiri project is equipping refugees with skills to tell their own stories and reflects one of the Kakuma programme’s key ambitions to ensure Meaningful Participation of refugees in driving system change.

Video and images provided by FilmAid Kenya. Produced & Shot By Bongomin Jackson; Edited By Emmanuel Albert.

 

For more on the work FilmAid Kenya is doing, visit their website here