Operation smile Concert Featuring Composers' club

On the 26th of January this year, ISK's Operation smile club along with the Composers' club held a concert at ISK to raise money for the Operation smile mission in Kenya. The composers's club members performed original pieces that they have been working on this year.
As a member of this club at ISK, I was ushering during this concert, handing out the schedule with the performance's details and walking people in the auditorium.
We also baked and had a bake sale during this concert. It was a great event where we as a group raised about 2000$ which is a great success for our club!

High school intercultural trip 2013 : Marich

This year, for our high school intercultural trip week, a small group of people from the club “Friends of Marich” ( a community service club at ISK) went to the northwestern area in Kenya. Since the beginning of the year, we have been working on several fundraising projects and events, and the money was used for projects we did in the Marich region where we went.

The group that went last year built a bridge over the river to help the locals. This year we went there and fixed it a bit, but our main project was to build a library (and we were working with the local school).

We had a book drive for this library and we were able to take more than 800 books which we catalogued and organized that week. The only work we were able to do was help carrying sand and bricks to the actual building site.

On our second day in Marich, which was monday, we woke up early, had breakfast then took the bus to go see the clinic. We walked 5km to get there and 5km to get back, and it was really sunny and hot. The clinic that was build in the past few years, but is still incomplete, with no supplies or nurses.

During the walk, we had to cross the Wei Wei River; which was quite fun even though I wasnt 

convinced at all in the beginning. Plus the water of the river was really cold and it was nice sine it was so hot.

On Tuesday, we visited the Turkewel Dam, the Dam was built by KVDH and was completed in 1991 with the power to output 106 megawatts of power. We also went underground to see the turbines, this tunnel was drilled 400 meters into and under the mountain to the Turkwel power station - with two huge turbines turning out 53 MW each.

On Wednesday, we had to choice to either stay at the camp and carry sand or catalog books with Mrs. Corrum, or to go to the bridge last year's group built. I chose to go with the bridge group. It took us one hour to get there, and once there, we started fixing the bridge.

Last year, the group built a bridge over the river to ease local movement around the region. The bridge was quite amazing and impressing. The only repairs we had to make was to wrap strips of wire around the railings to reinforce the support. We tightened the wire that was already in place there and removed the sharp pieces of wire to prevent injury to those crossing.

On Thursday that week, we went to a local market, the Sigor market and we had to make groups where each group had only 500Ksh to spend to make an outfit for a fashion we had later in the day.

Our main project this year was to build a library, which we have been working on with the local school. The foundation for the library was supposed to be completed in December but it wasn’t, so the only thing we could do to help was carrying sand and bricks up a hill to the building site, and that took an entire day of work.

The trip was a great experience, it was also a lot better than what I expected, the whole group really enjoyed it and some are even considering coming back next year, and even some people that were there last year came this year as well. We enjoyed working with the people in Marich and learn more about their culture and lives. 

Photography: David Robbins