The Outering High School (OHS) offers young people who have no access to government-sponsored public high schools, the chance to secondary education. Most children in the OHS come from the Mathare and Huruma slums. These slums have a population of about 1.5 million mainly poor people.

The school has 186 pupils. About 10% of these students are orphans, mostly because their parents are deceased from HIV / AIDS related illnesses. Their guardians sometimes pay for their education, sometimes only for the first year and sometimes not at all (and then they change schools every year). The OHS has limited resources to accept non-paying orphans and to pay for their lunch.

The OHS has been supported by the Van Doorn Foundation since 2007 in different ways. School fees have been paid for about 10 orphans (in 2007) to about 20 orphans (in 2011). This number was subsequently reduced by five students every year and since 2015 school fees are paid only for students who have applied for study-funding themselves.

Because the vast majority of the students come from families with very low income, the school cannot impose high school fees. The limited budget in turn means that issues such as maintenance of buildings and furniture have the lowest priority.

In early 2012 the Van Doorn Foundation and the Outering High School agreed to renovate the school building and provide new school furniture. To finance this, a fundraising campaign was launched. In the course of 2012 several donors expressed interest to support this renovation project, including Kraan Holding BV, Kantoor Lage Markt in Nijmegen, ASC and Sport Water BV. These parties brought together € 8,000 and the renovations have been carried out during the 2012 summer holidays. In addition, to introduce e-learning the OHS replaced all school boards by white-boards using the Van Doorn Foundation funds. At the end of 2013 there was only one classroom left that still needed new school furniture to complete the renovation.

We assisted the OHS in drafting a policy plan for 2012-2016 and to develop a proper financial administration, with the aim of OHS becoming gradually a profitable organization.

For the Outering High School the year 2014 started well! The required funds for the remaining furniture were brought together by friends of Addo! Addo Kranendonk is the 2013 deceased treasurer of the Van Doorn Foundation and the renovation of the OHS was his favorite project. It is very special that his friends collected as a kind of farewell present EUR 875, and Addo’s family providing the remaining EUR 575. We thank Camping De Grote Altena, Optimum ITC BV and Emmy Hettema!

The last school furniture was delivered mid-January 2014.