Keystone Education

We work with local partners to exponentially improve the performance of marginalised schools in Kenya through permaculture & clean energy

Our community led programmes will benefit school children, the local community and provides a mechanism to be financially sustainable

We identify corporations and organisations that are committed to improving educational and nutritional levels whilst mitigating their carbon & environmental footprint

Strategic Goals

  • Transform schools into dynamic learning centres for sustainable land use
  • Improve children’s school attendance, nutrition and concentration levels with regular school meals
  • Increase school learning hours and productivity with solar lighting and solar lamps
  • Community owned & developed permaculture and sustainable land management
  • Sell surplus permaculture crops to pay back the principal investment and cost of capital
  • Scale up the permaculture - energy - education model across Kenyan schools

Challenges

Kenyan Schools are under performing. There is a direct relationship between energy and the performance of schools. Energy poverty means no light in the classrooms, dormitories, no internet, no computers, no studying after dark and open fire cooking with all the devastating health and environmental consequences. 

This coupled with lack of food in schools and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WaSH) issues, walking home in the dark, human and wildlife conflict, prevents parents sending their children to school. 

Keystone Solution

Keystone are designing a community turnkey clean energy programme, that provides energy to not only power the school but importantly produces nutrient rich fertiliser, through biogas, which will be used to produce sustainable food (permaculture)

The food will help incentivise children to attend school with regular meals to supplement and diversify their diet, together with producing income from the surplus to pay for labour and the cost of the clean energy plant.

Location
Esiteti School, Amboseli

Key Facts

  • In Africa, the electrical power grid reaches only about 400m of continent’s 1bn people
  • Kenya’s Vision 2030 is to be globally competitive on education, training, research and innovation
  • Kenya has 78,405 schools many of which experience energy poverty, food shortages and land degradation
  • Exposure to indoor pollution causes nearly 4m premature deaths, including 16,600 deaths in Kenya, every year
  • 56.2% of primary schools are not connected to electricity

The Approach

Esiteti School was founded by African School for Kenya (“ASK”), an international NGO. The school was founded underneath an Acacia tree by James Kamete, a prominent Maasai elder, and Teri Gabrielsen, an American teacher and philanthropist

The school has done very well from humble beginnings but is under-resourced. It now has 520 primary school boys and girls, of which 140 board

​It has limited solar power that provides lighting in the classrooms and powers the borehole pump, but there isn't enough power to provide any electricity and lighting in the dormitories or to cook any food. The school uses open fire cooking to cook 180 meals three times a day. The school has only one computer.