Close to Our Lady of Mercy, Highway Boys Secondary School is an all boy’s public boarding school that hosts almost 1,200 students. It will be the site of one of four additional composting projects in schools across Nairobi. Now at the beginning of its waste management journey, Highway Boys Secondary hosts significant potential to transform the school grounds through Shield of Faith’s project!

At our initial site visit, Teacher Moraa, the Environment Club patron, greeted us with lots of excitement about the new project. She has visited the composting project at Our Lady of Mercy and believes that in partnership with Shield of Faith, the school can experience a mindset change towards environmental sustainability and better waste management practices. She says the boys are especially excited about the vermiculture aspect of composting and that they can’t wait to work with the red wriggler worms.

When asked about their current waste management system, Teacher Moraa explained that the school’s trash is currently burned in a plot near the boys’ recreational field where they play football and other sports. There’s not currently a system in place for food waste sorting or organic farming, but Stella and the teachers are confident this is the perfect blank canvas to start.

Teacher Moraa explains the school’s current dumping and waste management process. 

We discussed the site of the composting project with Teacher Moraa and Teacher Evelyn, who teaches agriculture at the school. Stella and the teachers agreed that the best site to begin the composting project is at the unused shamba the agriculture class once used for projects. It sits on one side of the school’s property, tucked behind the cow barn (which is great for fertilizer!) and the principal’s property. Teacher Evelyn explained that the school will need to level the area and build a fence along the perimeter  to make it accessible.

Teacher Evelyn describing the shamba.

The school’s shamba sits empty (and maybe slightly overgrown), ready for tower gardens, raised beds, composting bins, and vermiculture stations to be installed.

The future shamba and composting site for Boys Highway Secondary School. The school will need to clear the site and build a fence before the compost and vermiculture bins, tower gardens, garden plots, and handwashing station can be constructed.

The next step is for Shield of Faith to submit a master plan and blueprint to the school that will describe the composting site and Shield of Faith’s project activities. The school will use this plan to order supplies and begin prepping the shamba for use. 

Our Lady of Mercy and Highway Boys Secondary represent schools in very different phases of Shield of Faith’s composting programs. At Our Lady of Mercy, composting is part of the routine and at Highway Boys Secondary, the work is just beginning. But both schools are part of the same culture shift toward better food and waste management systems, smarter use of resources, and more resilient communities.