Round Table École de l'espoir (RTDE)

Community Service Project

Service Name

Round Table School of Hope

English Name

School of Hope

Association

RTDE

Founder

Round Table Germany

Status

Ongoing since 2005

Translated Name

Schule der Hoffnung

Round Table School of Hope (German: Schule der Hoffnung) is an education and community health project in Kisumu and Dago, western Kenya. Round Table Germany adopted it as its National Service Project for 2007/08. The work developed from support for a local school into a longer-term partnership involving education, vocational training, special-needs provision and health services. The project’s own website describes the local Kenyan organisation as leading the work with support from German partners.

How the project developed

The project timeline records an initial visit to a school in Kisumu in 2005 and a decision to support its development. In 2006, an ambulance/outpatient facility and a special-needs unit with library and computer facilities were handed over. Round Table Germany selected School of Hope as its 2007/08 National Service Project; the following expansion included primary-school classrooms and science facilities, a vocational training centre, a secondary school and further clinic capacity.

In response to the disruption following Kenya’s 2007 presidential election, the project also ran a time-limited food programme in 2008. The School of Hope timeline reports that subsidised food reached more than 3,000 people daily at its peak and that the programme ended in June 2008 as local supply conditions improved.

Kisumu and Dago

At Kisumu, the project site describes primary and secondary education, a special-needs school, vocational training and a clinic. It reports capacity for about 760 pupils and more than 100 staff; these are figures published by the project website and should be read as its reported capacity, not as a current enrolment count. At Dago, a nursery school opened in 2009 and a primary school followed in 2011/12. The project site reports a combined capacity of 440 children and describes shared facilities including a dining hall, kitchen, library and computer room.

Photographs and project record

The following archive photographs were originally published in the School of Hope’s project timeline and are reproduced here from the wiki’s existing media library.

See also the project’s chronology🔗 for dated construction, handover and programme milestones, and the official project website🔗 for descriptions of the Kisumu and Dago sites.

References

• Round Table Deutschland, “Helfen & Anpacken”🔗 — identifies School of Hope as the 2007/08 National Service Project and summarises the two-site programme.
• Round Table School of Hope, official website🔗 — descriptions and site-reported capacity figures for Kisumu and Dago.
• Round Table School of Hope, “Chronik”🔗 — dated history of the project, including 2005–2008 origins and milestones and later site development.
• Round Table 96 Ingolstadt, School of Hope project page🔗 — additional German Round Table project context.