Kimintet Library
Kirindon, Kenya

Kimintet is a governmental school located in Kirindon, a small village in the North Conservancy area of the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Narok County, Kenya. Kimintet used to be a primary school and it has recently become a comprehensive institute following the recent reform of the Kenyan educational system. Indeed, the first building was constructed in 1977 by an Italian priest, followed by implementations and additional constructions of new classrooms, dorms and offices carried out by World Vision over the years and it used to host two pre-primary grades and six primary grades.

A new classroom has recently been built by the government to host the junior secondary grades seven, eight, and nine. The Kimintet school is located along the dirt road connecting Kilgaris to the Maasai Mara Reserve. Here, just below the equator, nature takes center stage. On the road, before reaching the village, it’s very common to see zebras, giraffes, antelopes, and many other wild animals. Life is lived with approximately zero impact on the environment, producing almost no waste and using natural resources. Cars are very few; people get around on foot, by animal-drawn carts, or via piki-piki, the typical motorcycles.

The village is made of a few houses, local shops and eating spots made mostly of metal sheets, raw earth or concrete blocks. Moreover, the village has a local dispensary and a water collection tank connected to the roof of the old cereal factory where people from Kirindon and nearby villages come to collect water. From the village, turning West and after driving for a few minutes, lies the Kimintet School.

The Project “Karibu Kimintet – the School in the Savannah” is a project by A.PART – Actions for People, Architecture, Rights, Territory, an Italian non-profit organization promoting development, cooperation and international solidarity projects with vulnerable communities in the Global South. The long term aim of the project is the renovation of the entire Kimintet school in order to guarantee the right to education for all students in suitable environments that promote learning and to secure the community’s safe access to water and food. We are tackling this challenge gradually by focusing on one intervention at a time.

But how did this project start? It all started in 2020 when Francesca, one of A.PART’s co-founders, spent a few months volunteering with the local Mara Osero Project, today A.PART’s strongest partner on site. Part of the volunteering was spent at the school, and after the experience, she returned to Italy with a request from the local community to support in giving new life to the school. Carla and Julia decided to join her in this effort and formed A.PART from our different backgrounds and aspirations; it was clear that the direction we wanted to pursue was rooting our projects in community participation and the cooperation between us and the local population.

The first phase of analysis and field surveys started in 2021, with a photographic survey of all the buildings present. There were 11 buildings in total, now reaching 12, with the addition of the new junior secondary grades classroom. The structures inside and outside were degraded, unsafe, and without proper furniture for all the students. We started to implement a process of community involvement and organized meetings with the men, women, kids, the students’ families and the school’s board of management. This allowed us to gain insights, understand the needs of this community, and outline the priorities for the renovation of the school.

After this process, we returned to Italy with the aim of fundraising for our first phase. After numerous events, project presentations, collaborations with partners and the involvement of volunteers, the apart team finally landed in Kenya again. This time we had a specific purpose in mind and the funds to do it: reactivating the school’s library. Together with the apart core team, a group of five volunteers joined us from Italy and Belgium to support this ambitious intervention.

We already knew the state of the existing library room and we knew that there were no books inside. So before traveling to Kirindon, we got in touch with Book Aid’s representative in Kenya at the Kenya National Library. Book Aid is a UK charity that collects and donates books for schools in need around the world. Thanks to this contact, we were able to receive a donation of over 300 books from the Kenya Community Library Network.

After that, the whole group traveled from Nairobi to Kirindon in two days, passing through the town of Narok and beautiful views of the Rift Valley When we arrived, the state of the school library was similar to what we had seen two years before: a room that hadn’t been used for a long while, without books, progressively deteriorated over the years. Also, the windows were lacking or were damaged. Ceiling panels show signs of mold and animal feces making the environment unhealthy. Shelves and furniture were partially broken or unstable.

Additionally, the electrical system was not functioning. We sat down with the school board of management and discussed our shared ideas on how the library could look like. We presented our project draft and the 3D with all the different functional areas and colors we had in mind. The board members loved it and we agreed on the final design. Meanwhile, we started to stamp the books received from Book Aid and the Kenya Community Library Network.

The reactivation of the Kimintet Library to make it a focal point for the students and the entire village entailed three different actions. First of all, the architectural renovation of the interior space. Secondly, establishing partnerships with other non-profit entities and finally implementing capacity building processes to transfer new skills to teachers for a better future management of the library.

Architecturally and distribution wise, the main issues with the existing library included the dark and unhealthy environment due to the dark colors of the walls and floor, a low hanging fake ceiling, a central full height partition that prevented light passage from one side of the room to the other, and finally, a lack of division into specifically separate functional areas. The architectural project for the new library aimed to create a joyful environment suitable for children and teenagers that promotes and facilitates learning through reading.

We started with the due demolitions and remove the fake ceiling and relocated the existing furniture. And the approximately 60 square meter space revealed great potential with long, large windows, airy spaces and beautiful light. The existing trusses were sanded and treated. The walls were sanded as well, removing the old paint, and the cracked floor screed was demolished. After demolitions, the sloped ceiling revealed with the removal of the fixed ceiling was covered in reed, a natural material that enhanced the space, conferring a bright atmosphere.

The floor was rebuilt by first raising a screed with proper sloping for water drainage that was later covered with a white cement layer. The existing windows were repaired and repainted, while the missing glass was substituted. An internal partition was built using locally sourced bricks up to one meter, on top of which we built wooden frames that create interplay of shelves, wooden screens, and void to look on the other side of the room. These elements are allowed light to penetrate, reaching every corner of the room.

Finally, the walls were straightened with stucco and painted with light and bright shades. After this space, some spots of the room, including walls and floor, were decorated with specific colors in order to differentiate the functional areas. Orange for the reception and entrance, yellow for the library and individual study area, green for the collective study and play area, and blue for the relaxing and reading area. For this last part, a raised platform with an organic shape was built, which was later equipped with pillows made by the communities women from the shuka, the typical Maasai fabric.

To furnish and equip the room, we built wooden furniture mostly from the trees belonging to our partner Mara Osero project. At the entrance we built a unit with lockers where users can leave shoes, backpacks and personal items for the reception and the teacher’s supervision. Over the library, we built a semicircular counter with storage space along the entirety of the east wall. We built a modular bookshelf, each module containing shelves to store books, a small desk for individual study and two steps for the younger kids to reach the books on top.

The first part of the bookshelf is closed by cupboards for the teachers to store and archive other books, documents, and studying material. Last but not least, the library needed a functioning electrical system in order to connect the lamps and illuminate the space during later hours, as well as activating power outlets. Jonathan Gall, one of our volunteers and an experienced electrical engineer, was able to restore it properly. He identified the source of power in the adjacent room, substituted some parts, and properly restored the batteries that provide light and electricity for the building. The new library was finally ready.

A crucial step in a community-based project like this is ensuring that the service and space provided can run autonomously through members of the beneficiary community. The development of a sense of ownership essential to achieve this is surely built. First of all, through the community’s active participation in the project, the decision making process and the construction phase. Despite realizing all this, we felt like a more focused and specific capacity building process was necessary. Through a fruitful collaboration with the Kenya Library Community Network, we promoted a three day training for five teachers from the C school.

The workshop was led by a representative of the KLCN and covered library management skills, including cataloging, archiving, and the promotion of the reading culture. After the three days, the KLCN issued certificates of the participation for all the teachers, which can be included in their resumes for future work endeavors. After the training, the teachers autonomously started to catalog and archive the books that Book Aid had donated to us in Nairobi, in order to start populating the renovated library’s bookshelves.

Essential to achieve our set of objectives with the library was creating a network of local and international partners working in complementary fields, following principles and values similar to those guiding the Karibu Kimintet project. Key collaborations included the Mara Osero Project, who provided local support in terms of knowledge, logistics, community contacts, and manpower, as well as Book Aid International and the Kenya National Library Service organizations, with their donation of 300 books to the new Kimintet library, suitable for the age groups of the school students and culturally appropriate for Maasai children and youths.

We were incredibly proud to see that the renovation of the Kiminet library has had a positive ripple effect on the school overall. After the news had spread that the school had a new library, other local organizations donated more books that the school unexpectedly received with joy, making the library richer and richer. Also, the school has been under evaluation by the county to be eligible to host three junior secondary additional grades. Also thanks to this renovated space, the school was positively evaluated and a new classroom was built. What were the biggest challenges during the process, since this was your first project as an organisation?

The library was the first intervention that we promoted as an organization and, in terms of how long did it take and the challenges that we encountered, the process started of course with registration of our organization and it was a crucial part in order to start and renovate a part of the school. So the process to register our organization took around two months for us to prepare all the documentations to present, in order to register ourselves, including the statute, and then more months of paperwork for us to be recognized and gain our registration number and fiscal code.

And regarding raising the funds needed to renovate the library, we only raised the funds through events and private donations. So reaching the sum needed for the library renovation took about two years, but at the same time, we started to have some administrative expenses, especially in terms of registering our organization. So this delayed a little bit our fundraising process. Renovating the library itself took around three months from the design phase to the end of the construction.

We took some time beforehand to actually be able to find the right partners that we needed to implement the project in the best way, which are the Kenya National Library and Book Aid. These partners provided donations of books and also a training, to our, to five of our teachers. And it was crucial for us because we didn’t want just to renovate a library, but we wanted to make sure that the library would work autonomously through the network and the staff of the school apart from the renovation in architectural terms.

And let’s say that the renovation of the library itself, like the building site, was probably the less challenging aspect because we had a lot of support from our volunteers on site and our local partners. And we also took advantage of being on site to request more funds while the work had already started. Raising those additional funds when we were already renovating the library was crucial for us to complete it.

What are the future plans for the school project? So our aim with the Karibu Kimintet project is the renovation of the entire school and the construction of new buildings to offer better services to the students and the staff. And we are working on the next stages. And the next intervention is probably going to be the renovation of the room next to the library, which is a computer room.

We have a general idea of how the complete master plan could look like, but we are yet to define the project in every detail, especially because we are very keen on implementing a participatory design process. So we are looking forward to co-designing the next spaces together with the students, the teachers, and the school board. And regarding the library, it is well kept and it is used on a daily basis through a system of shifts.

And we noticed that it is not very supervised while the school is closed. For example, during the holidays, and this is mostly because the teachers that came in that change unexpectedly and it is hard to assign a supervision responsibility to a specific person. But overall, the library is very well kept. And also the new library contributed to an increase of student enrollment. It is also contributing to the recent positive evaluation of the school as one of the best schools in the area.

And it made it be noticed more by the government, which led the local county to give more funds to the school for some implementations and improvements. And more importantly, to upgrade the school from my primary institute to a comprehensive institute with the building of a new secondary school classroom.

How was the community involved in the entire process? The design of the library started while we were already in Kenya, so it wasn’t planned a lot in advance this time. Um, mostly because the renovation was simple and functional and we didn’t need a long time to design it. We had a general idea, which we translated into a 3D model that we showed to the school board and they approved it. Then we defined some details together and then started the works.

The building site saw the participation of many community members from the materials procurement to the demolitions and the building phases. For the next phases, we are planning a longer and more structured involvement of the community. We already have some impressions about the general needs of the school from some interviews and diary studies that we promoted in 2021 as part of our first survey, which we continued to implement through the years, especially in 2024 when we continue to monitor the needs and expectations of the community through a series of focus groups. So we are planning to go more into the details of the master plan and future renovations for the next phases.

How was the decision made to renovate the existing building? The school is made up of different buildings belonging to different tiers. So not all of them are in such a state of structural decay to the point of considering demolition and reconstruction. And since we strongly believe in pursuing sustainable architecture projects, sustainability is also achieved by not wasting unnecessary resources where they’re not needed. So this is why we have decided that when the stability of the structures existing structures allows it, the priority will be to renovate the existing spaces, making them healthy and suitable for their intended use.

Only constructing new buildings when it is required. For example, a new kitchen canteen and accommodation for teachers. This is the principle that guided the renovation process of the library. The most decaying elements were substituted, such as the suspended ceiling, which was completely removed, and some of the trusses for the roof were consolidated. And the rest of the process was focused on bringing the space back to life with interventions on bringing light inside the space, building a partition, finishing the walls and floor, and building new furniture, making the new library a safe, functional and student friendly space using minimum resources.

What lessons were learned during the construction process? We surely learn a lot from this first experience. We already faced some challenges that can present again, such as bad weather and general delays, and we are now more equipped to know how to better address them and foresee them. When planning the next phases, we will certainly plan the construction phases more in advance with bill of quantities and more precise timetable so that we can also have more control over our budget and expenditure.

And we also learned a lot about the availability of construction materials in the area. So we can also plan in advance how to save money on materials, transportation. And overall we plan to use the knowledge that we built on the availability of materials in the area to make more informed choices and select more sustainable materials for our next interventions.