BTI Foundation

Campaigning for reading and writing

Didy — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:38:18 +0000

BTI Foundation started a campaign in the Netherlands for Maasai mothers and daughters to learn how to read and write. We asked for support to primary schools, all types of businesses, educational institutes, libraries, publishers, families and individuals. In the Netherlands it is quite normal to learn reading and writing in school. For Maasai mothers, in the rural areas around Amboseli National Park in Kenya, it is not so normal. When these Maasai mothers were young, (at that time Maasai mostly were nomads) the community thought education was not a primary need. Right now the Maasai mothers asked BTI Foundation to help them. Because they want to learn how to read and write. BTI Foundation cannot do this alone, that is why we asked for support. And we also want to ask you, wherever you are in the world, to support this important initiative!

Didy van Brandwijk

Almost 4 weeks online

Didy — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:32:48 +0000

We are almost 4 weeks online now and we are very happy there is great interest in our website! We recieved lots of emails from people all over the country ( teachers, consultants, bankemployees, hairdressers, lawyers, publishers) who want to support the work of BTI Foundation in Kenya. Thank you very much for the nice words and also for the donations! In the media we see more and more attention nowadays for the threatening disaster in Kenya/East-Africa. A prolonged period of drought (no rainfall during the last 3 years!!) causes a shortage of food and water in a way we can’t imagine at all!! Every four days we call the people we work with in Kenya/Amboseli to discuss the situation. To this very day we are taking care of warm lunches to be sure that ‘our’ children don’t attend school with an empty stomach. BTI Foundation will monitor the media when it comes to this subject.

Didy van Brandwijk

Re-opening schools first week of September

Didy — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:34:41 +0000

In Kenya schools are closed during the month of August. During this holiday season BTI teachers attended Teacher Training. Beginning of September everybody was back again and they all started the new term with an important and cheerfull re-opening ceremony together with the children and the parents.

On September 4th I received a phone call from Jackson, chairman of Olasiti Cultural Manyatta, in which he told me he was very happy that there will be one hundred and eleven (111) pupils for the next term. Both of us were quite enthusiastic but also a bit worried: the school has only two teachers and two classrooms! The next day I phoned with teacher Joseph. He told me that he and his collegue Benjamin during Teacher Training in August learned a lot about how to take care of the 3 year olds!

Website online

Didy — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:18:13 +0000

The official website of BTI Foundation is online!! Now we can inform the whole world about the work BTI Foundation did, is doing and hopes to do in the near and far future. Everybody can help us now to realize good education for the Maasai! I take this first oppertunity to say ‘THANK YOU’ to some people who really were there to help me during the last weeks. First I want to thank YummyGum, their webdesigners Leon en Vincent, did a very good job; they were always there to help me with whatever problem. I also want to thank BrightView Video/Photo, Hendrik Jan, for his beautiful pictures: visualization in a professional way sometimes tells more than many many words. The next person I want to thank is Sami. He is responsible for Twitter on our website. His tweets are very catching (look for the 15 quotes about education!) so don’t miss them. I also want to thank our Senior Consultant Dries. He gave a lot of his freetime to this website, gave advices where he thought it was necessary! Then last but not least I want to thank several persons in Kenya….

Saturday June 27th we organized a presentation of our website in Kenya. Because of the fact that a lot of information on the site is about Maasai, of course it goes without saying, we wanted to show this webdesign and content of it first to the people concerning. For that presentation I very much want to thank the manager of Amboseli Serena Safari Lodge Mr. Herman Mwasaghua. He and his staff put a lot of effort in making this presentation a success. And a great success it was! All IT-possibilities of Amboseli Serena Safari Lodge was reserved for the conference room that day and all the equipment was working perfectly. That particular day we invited 40 Maasai and they all were there with us. Most of the man and women were very beuatifull dressed in their traditional clothes. And, as Mr Daniel Leturesh (chairman of Olgulului Group Ranch) afterwards said to us: we as Maasai think it is so very nice, this is specially designed for and about us.

Didy van Brandwijk.