Imprezza Academy
A secondary school in Busia County, Kenya, for children who would otherwise not be learning.
Imprezza Academy sits in Busia County, in western Kenya, close to the Ugandan border. The school was founded by Catherine Omanyo and has 160 students: 87 girls and 73 boys, between thirteen and eighteen years old.
The school charges no fees. That is not a detail, it is the whole point. The students are orphans, children without a home, and children from families with no money for school. Because the school is private and charges nothing, it also receives no government funding. Everything has to come from somewhere else.
What is there, and what isn’t
There are teachers, classrooms, and a blackboard with the mission written on it in chalk. There is a dormitory for the girls who live too far to walk every day: bunk frames under mosquito nets in a shed, with no sanitary block of its own. Cooking is done over a wood fire under a lean-to. At the back of the grounds stand classrooms without a roof, where the money once ran out.
What Nabwire does here
Nabwire funds and oversees building projects at this school, starting with the girls’ dormitory. The design is by Kenyan architect Joseph Muthoga. Execution rests with a local project team that reports and is paid against milestones.