Written by: Fidelis Nasong’o – Values and Life Skills Officer, RELI Africa and Nyambura Thiong’o- Country Coordinator RELI Africa, Kenya Chapter
In many parts of East Africa, particularly in rural and pastoralist communities, the challenges facing education are complex, encompassing limited resources, gender disparities, vast catchment areas, and climate-related disruptions. Yet, within these challenges lies an opportunity to reimagine education as a shared responsibility across the entire ecosystem that surrounds a child.
Kenya’s ongoing transition to Competency-Based Education (CBE) marks a historic shift from knowledge-based learning process and formative assessment to a system that priorities what learners can do, their values, skills, and competencies. At its heart, CBE seeks to produce well-rounded individuals who are academically capable and emotionally intelligent, socially responsible, and well-equipped for life beyond the classroom. Yet, while the framework is visionary, one of its greatest challenges lies in its implementation and, more specifically, how best to nurture life skills and values in schools, homes, communities, and cultural systems that shape children’s everyday lives.
This is where Dupoto-e-Maa’s work, a member of RELI Africa, Kenya in Kajiado becomes a living example of CBE in action. Their community-led approach demonstrates that sustainable change must emerge from within, from people who understand the rhythms, values, and struggles of their context. They begin by sensitizing both national and county government officials, followed by inception meetings and training sessions for teachers across public schools. Next, they train community leaders, ensuring diverse representation, including the chief, village administrators, church leaders, youth, women, persons with disabilities, school board members, and local CBOs. From this group, two leaders are selected and elevated to serve as community trainers, helping to extend the program’s reach and impact at the grassroots level. By mobilising this group, they have created an ecosystem where values like respect, and responsibility, are not abstract concepts from a curriculum guide, but lived practices reinforced through daily interactions, positive cultural practices, and local leadership.
Dupoto-e-Maa is part of a project that brings together 15 partners including RELI Africa as the convenor. The Collective Agency on Life Skills and Values is a collaborative movement bringing 15 organisations working in Kajiado, Isiolo, Turkana, and Wajir. The project aims to demonstrate that lasting change in education requires shared ownership across all levels of society by engaging learners, teachers, school communities to ensure that children in ASAL areas demonstrate improved agency on matters that impact their holistic development
The nurturing of life skills and values requires a system shift, where every stakeholder (Government, communities, and schools) plays a role. When these actors work in harmony, they create a self-sustaining movement that promotes values and Life Skills not just in classrooms, but in homes, villages, and institutions.
In the pastoral lands of Magadi ward, Elang’ata Wuas Sub County in Kajiado West, schools like Shompole Comprehensive School and Endoinyo Olasho Comprehensive School face tough challenges including large student populations, few teachers, and a clear gender gap in the teaching personnel, with only one female teacher among twelve in each school. The teaching staff comprises those employed by the Teachers Service Commission (TSC), and the Board of Management (BOM). In Shompole Comprehensive School, 6 are employed by the Teacher Service Commission, and the remaining 6 by the Board of Management, highlighting a system already heavily reliant on local investment. Yet, in this remote setting near the Kenya-Tanzania border, a quiet transformation is unfolding. Through Dupoto-e-Maa’s grassroots model, schools have become hubs for community dialogue, where elders, parents, women, and youth are trained as champions of values and life skills. Homes are being reimagined as learning spaces through the revival of Oleng’oti, a traditional family hearth now used for meaningful conversations between parents and children. This is more than a program; it’s a movement that empowers communities to lead in shaping education, values, and the future of their children.
Dupoto-e-Maa’s work unfolds through a series of strategies that translate policy ambition into lived reality, each grounded in indigenous wisdom and modern learning principles.
- Parents lead the way
The movement begins with parents recognising themselves as the first and most enduring teachers in a child’s life. This represents a profound re-centering of a long held cultural practice that was gradually eroded by formal education in African societies, leading to the view that education is the sole responsibility of schools. The new shift embraces parenting as a shared act of learning and modelling values, a practice and belief which was grounded in many indegienous African societies in doing so, the model restores agency to families and gives depth to CBE’s vision of learner-centred education. - The utilisation of existing community systems
The Oleng’oti ,traditionally the hearth and heart of the Maasai home, is reimagined as a dedicated time and space for value-based dialogue between parents and children. Here, conversations about responsibility, respect, honesty, and resilience take place naturally, woven into storytelling, shared meals, and reflection. Each Oleng’oti becomes a micro-classroom for life, bridging the gap between the competencies outlined in CBE and the lived realities of family life. - Parents as role models and society creating champions
Dupoto-e-Maa challenges parents and leaders to embody the very values they wish to nurture. Local champions, elders, youth leaders, and women’s groups are identified and celebrated, turning abstract ideals into relatable, visible examples. This community validation mirrors the CBE emphasis on demonstration and performance, learning by doing, not just by instruction. - Leadership that reflects the community
Each participating community identifies a team of 15 local leaders, chiefs, elders, women, youth, and persons with disabilities, from whom two are trained as community trainers. These trainers then cascade learning to others, ensuring continuity and ownership. It is a model of distributed leadership that sustains transformation even when external actors step back, showing how collective agency can keep the system alive. Dupoto-e-Maa is an organisation that was established in the spirit of ‘the community for community’ where members of the community from Kajiado continue supporting access to quality education among the community members.
Community engagement changes with the seasons and like CBE itself, Dupoto-e-Maa’s approach demands flexibility and reflection. When drought strikes, attendance drops as families migrate with their livestock. Yet rather than viewing this as failure, the team adapts, and schools become mobilisation centres, trained leaders step in to sustain activities, and messaging is woven into everyday encounters.
This adaptive spirit embodies the essence of competency-based learning, continuous assessment, reflection, and adjustment. It reminds us that transformation is a process, not a product, and that the community’s rhythms must shape the pace of progress.
The story of Dupoto E-Maa in Kajiado is more than a local success; it shows that when policies like CBE are grounded in community systems, they cease to be government directives and become lived realities of the people. By recognising that positive cultural practices are not barriers but a strong foundation, Dupoto-e-Maa has proven that the most sustainable educational change begins from the inside out, in homes, traditions, and local leadership.
The fires of Oleng’oti in Kajiado remind us that education reform is not just about systems and standards; it is about people, relationships, and the courage to trust communities as the architects of change.
