I would have never imagined or it would have ever crossed my mind that one day I would be studying in CIE. My journey to CIE was rather short but exciting. I was in Kenya working with a civic organization called Twaweza which is a new citizen-centered initiative, focusing on large-scale social change in East Africa. It is here that I met and worked with a student from CIE, Martina Ochieng who was and still is my mentor and which opened doors for my career path.

I also worked with Twaweza’s partner Uwezo which assessed basic literacy in Children aged 6-16 years. Both in Twaweza and Uwezo I was able to get international experience as I worked with people from the other African countries and continents.

My interest in International Education was catalyzed by an event while I was working with Twaweza.  I attended a workshop on Citizen Education and Education which was organized by University of Alberta. At this particular moment our Education partners had launched a report on ‘Are Our Children Learning’ from the report a key question emerged from discussions with my colleagues, was our education system failing us? To what extent does the Kenyan Education system engage critical citizen education? These questions haunt me. 

I felt I needed to explore these questions to exchange ideas with others as well as develop new questions in the words of Wole Soyinka “I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others” to understand a story I must see it from another environment and not be a character in the narrative but to be an objective observer.

I believe that my studies in the CIE community will enable me to learn how to transform the questions into an opportunity not only for my personal growth, but for the good of many while developing a career path in something meaningful. I also feel it would allow me to understand my country, my continent and the world in a new and exciting way.