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Lavenda Springs

QK has close links with the Lavenda Springs Project which is located some four hours north of Nairobi in rural Kenya. Students at both schools gain a real understanding of each other's lives through contacts, visits and more.

Twelve Year 9/10 students and three staff visited Lavenda in May 2007 supported by a grant from Westminster's Youth Opportunity Fund where they ran basketball workshops, planted trees and took part in building and plastering work for the QK Kivuli House. On their return, the students gave talks and ran workshops for their peers as part of Community Week activities.

Founders Ruth and Jeff Njuguna have visited QK a number of times to meet students and staff, teach and take part in workshops.

QK students and staff are very active in fund-raising. Events at QK have raised over £12,000 since 2001. The summer 2007 event was an Indulgence Evening where people were pampered with manicure, pedicure, massage, reflexology and more provided by professional therapists. Lavanda also has a child sponsorship programme.

The Lavenda Education and Health Foundation

Now a community development project employing over 50 adults, it began as a school with just 5 pupils. Lavenda now educates, feeds, clothes and houses well over 400 children and runs adult literacy classes, apprenticeships in carpentry, building and hairdressing, and women's groups.

In addition to the school, the Foundation has built homes for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS and water tanks to 'harvest' the meagre rainfall. It has planted over 10,000 trees and uses environmentally friendly cooking and building methods.

It began when Ruth and Jeff returned to Jeff's birthplace in 1997 following the tragic loss of their first daughter, Lavenda Wairimu. They witnessed hundreds of abandoned and orphaned street children needing love and a future. They bought a piece of land to start a school in their daughter's name and the project grew to what it is today.