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A citizenship lesson from the Nairobi book

Harambee: We Pull Together

Grades 2 to 5 · K-1 with an adult reading aloud · one 60 minute session or two 30 minute sessions, plus the class harambee day

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STEP 1

What have you ever made together with many people?

Why this lesson: One story says help arrives in Kenya from outside. The truer story is a word Kenya put on its own coat of arms: harambee, we all pull together. Neighbors have used it to build schools, clinics, and libraries with their own hands and gifts. Children learn that a community can build its own, that every contribution counts, and that they can pull too.

Anything built, cooked, cleaned, or organized by many hands. Add every answer.

Your class’s ideas will pin up here.
STEP 2

The words carry a wish. Flip them open.

In Nairobi, Wanjiru greets Alexandria with “Mambo!”, and her grandmother welcomes the family with “Karibu”: welcome. In the book, the welcome comes with an invitation: come and be part of what we are making tomorrow.

The cover of the Nairobi, Kenya book
STEP 3

Your turn: three questions.

Write or draw on paper, or type here. Typed answers appear on your class page at the end.

STEP 4

Something real to read, and talk through.

Go deep on what a harambee really is. Read aloud from real coverage of Kenyan harambee projects: neighbors gathering to build a classroom, stock a library, or raise school fees together. Walk the class through the whole shape of it: what it is (a community calls a gathering for something needed, and people pledge what they can: money, goods, food, or work), what it means (we build our own; a small gift and a large gift carry the same dignity), and what happens (contributions are welcomed one by one, there is food and music, children carry and help, and when it ends, the thing the street built is still standing).

Open each question when you are ready. Type what your class says:

What is a harambee, in your own words?
What children might sayChildren might say: a giant helping day; a party where everyone brings a piece; neighbors building something together. All of these are right. The key idea to draw out: it is called by the community, for the community.
What kinds of things do people bring to a harambee?
What children might sayFrom the reading, children might name money, chairs, food, tools, time, and work. Draw out that the small gift and the big gift both count, and that in the book, even the children carried books.
What gatherings do we know that are like a harambee?
What children might sayChildren might name a school fundraiser, a block party, a potluck, a barn raising, a car wash for the team. Compare honestly: what is the same (everyone brings something), and what makes harambee its own (it is a national word, a promise on the coat of arms, and the thing built stays for everyone).
What could our class build if everyone brought one small thing?
What children might sayEvery serious answer is right, and one of them becomes the class harambee. Keep the list; the class votes in the next step.
STEP 5

Six actions. Which will your class do this week?

Tap a name to see the activity. Tap We’ll do this to put it on your class page.

🌍
Find Nairobi on the map. Notice the national park that touches the city, where lions live beside the towers. Ask: where does nature live closest to OUR town, and who takes care of it?
👂
At home, each child asks a family member about a time family or neighbors pulled together to make something happen, and listens to the whole story. Children retell one detail to the class.
🗳
The class votes to choose its harambee project from the discussion list, then plans it: what we need, who brings what, who does what.
💡
Chart the gatherings the class compared: harambee, potluck, fundraiser, block party, barn raising. Same heart, different words. Children add gathering words from their own families and languages.
🪞
My one thing: each child names the one thing they will bring, make, or do for the class harambee, and signs their name to it, like a pledge card.
🤝
When two project ideas compete, do what the street in the book did: talk it through, look for the answer where everyone can give a little, and let the group say yes together.
STEP 6

Then and now. Drag the handle.

↔
◀ Nairobi, the railway yearsNairobi today ▶

Ask together: What changed? What stayed? From a railway town to a city of towers, matatus, and a park full of lions at its edge. What did people build?

These pictures are our artist’s sketches. For real photographs, search the place names together on the classroom screen.

STEP 7

Our Class Harambee Plan

⭐A class harambee: the class chooses one thing their room truly needs, everyone brings or makes one small part, and they build it together in one day, each contribution carrying its giver’s first name.

What will the class make together? List who brings what, each contribution with its giver's first name.

Our Class Harambee Plan

Everything your class typed, on one page. Print it, sign it, post it.

Our first ideas

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Our reflections

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What we said together

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The actions we chose

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Our plan

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Signed by

With thanks to the Kenyan coverage read aloud in your classroom. · alexandriasworld.com · Welcome home.