Maarifa House & Mazingira Libraries

Our Maarifa libraries project creates learning hubs – hubs where students can explore the world and inspire their imagination through books.

The Maarifa libraries not only feed students’ thirst for knowledge but also provide vital practical resources that were lacking in our project schools, not to mention, a hub for school and community gatherings.

We work with the resources we have and the needs of the school. As such the Maarifa libraries come in different forms including a brand new building to ‘cupboard’ libraries, when just starting out.

At Illoirero Primary School, there was simply no classroom space available to run our Education for Conservation lessons, so here we designed and constructed the Maarifa House. Designed with many sustainability features in mind, including raised and elevated roof lines to allow natural airflow and light, to harvest rainwater and one day be fitted with solar panels to power the building, building columns are made using recycled tyres and oil drums, feature bricks made using old plastic bottles and the pavers made from recycled plastic – this space is a classroom, library and community hall in one. Construction was completed in February 2023.

By early 2023 a Maarifa library was officially opened at Kishermoruk Primary School in the Mara. Retrofitting an old school building with a fresh coat of paint, new furniture and bookshelves and the installation of a digital learning screen with WiLearn wifi, this space is now a buzzing knowledge hub.

Our newest school to join the Maarifa family is Oloibormurt Primary School in the Mara. With limited resources at this time for construction of a new building and with no available existing buildings to retrofit, we are building up a Maarifa ‘cupboard’ library.

To ensure our resources extend as far as possible and also to keep with our environmental ethos, we purchase second hand books from Half-Price Books in Nairobi in bulk. Our schools also work together, to exchange books with each other, so there are always fresh reads for students.

Would you like to donate books to our library?

$10 (2-4 books); $20 (4-8 books); $50 (10 – 20 books)

Maarifa Libraries

Our Maarifa libraries project creates learning hubs – hubs where students can explore the world and inspire their imagination through books.

The Maarifa libraries not only feed students’ thirst for knowledge but also provide vital practical resources that were lacking in our project schools, not to mention, a hub for school and community gatherings.

We work with the resources we have and the needs of the school. As such the Maarifa libraries come in different forms including a brand new building to ‘cupboard’ libraries, when just starting out.

At Illoirero Primary School, there was simply no classroom space available to run our Education for Conservation lessons, so here we designed and constructed the

Maarifa House

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What We Do

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

Education Bursaries