There is a quiet belief that follows many students through school: mathematics is for the “gifted ones” and everyone else is just getting by. It is a belief that can shape a student’s confidence long before it shapes their grades. Mathrise was built to challenge this belief.
The project began in two schools in Samburu last year, with a simple but ambitious goal: to improve not just how students perform in mathematics, but also how they feel about it. Since then, it has grown into five schools in Kitui, carried forward by volunteers who show up not as distant experts, but as people willing to sit beside students and work through the numbers together.
But statistics and school counts only tell part of the story. The real story lives in the students and volunteers who have lived it.
At St. Augustine Kauma, Benson Kisasi, a student, used to see mathematics the way many of his peers did, a subject reserved for the naturally talented. If you weren’t one of those students there wasn’t much point in trying too hard. Mathrise changed that for him. Through the program, Benson began to see mathematics not as a locked door for the chosen few, but as a skill built through consistent effort. He puts it simply, in words that have become something of a personal motto: “Hesabu ni kujituma.”
It’s a small sentence, but it carries a big shift from believing ability is fixed, to knowing it can be built. Benson now hopes to pursue tourism management at university, carrying with him not just better grades, but a new relationship with challenge itself: the belief that effort, not just talent, moves people forward.
On the other side of the classroom is Neema Mulu, a volunteer facilitator with Mathrise and a student at Strathmore. Neema remembers what it felt like to be a young student looking up to her own teachers who seemed almost untouchable, too far above to approach with a question or a doubt. It’s a feeling many students carry quietly, one that can make asking for help feel harder than it should be.
Now, standing on the other side of that relationship, Neema sees things differently. Facilitating with Mathrise has shown her that teachers are simply people capable of patience, humour, and connection and she hopes the students she works with come to know that too. She wants them to feel that the space between teacher and learner doesn’t have to feel so wide.
The experience has changed her as well. Neema shares that her confidence in the classroom even back at Strathmore has grown noticeably since she began facilitating, shaped by the everyday practice of standing in front of students, explaining, encouraging, and simply showing up. What began as volunteering has become its own quiet education in communication and self-assurance.
A Project Measured in More Than Numbers
Mathrise was never only about raising scores, though that matters too. It is about shifting the story students tell themselves about what they are capable of and giving volunteers like Neema a chance to grow alongside them.
From two schools in Samburu to five in Kitui, the project is still young. But in the words of a student who now believes effort can take him anywhere, and a volunteer who has learned as much from her students as they’ve learned from her, Mathrise is already proving that with the right support, anyone can find their way into a subject and a future they once thought was out of reach.
Hesabu ni kujituma. And with the right people beside you, that effort is never made alone.
Article written by Karen Kibugu
