Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Mike Farris:
Kenya has a small homeschooling community of about 100 indigenous homeschool families. Back in 1998, one family, who had learned about homeschooling while living in Australia, decided to homeschool their children in Kenya. After taking other families’ children into their homeschool for a time, the Muriukis decided to focus on homeschooling their own children and encourage the other families to homeschool their own children.

Mary Muriuki started an organization to help equip Kenyans to homeschool, since many cannot afford expensive curriculum. Mary plans to write and publish curriculum and to eventually acquire a facility where she can further assist Kenyan homeschoolers.

When Mary began homeschooling in Kenya, she found curriculum from another African country with a significant homeschool population—that is, South Africa. Currently an estimated 150,000 families home educate in South Africa. Repressed until 1996, homeschooling is now expressly provided for in South African law.

But there is a catch—homeschoolers deal with sticky curriculum requirements. A legal defense trust in South Africa exists to help homeschoolers educate their children. They are working to ensure that the growing number of families who choose to educate at home will be able to raise their children according to their conscience—like millions of their fellow homeschoolers around the world. I’m Mike Farris.