The Impact of Institutionalization of Street children: A Case Study of Nairobi County.

The number of street children in Kenya keep on burgeoning day in out. This happens despite the fact that there are many programmes that have been put in place to curb the street children phenomenon. This initiatives have been constituted by the government, private. Nairobi is the capital city of the Republic of Kenya. Statistics have it that the population of street children in Nairobi alone is estimated at 500,000. This number keeps on burgeoning everyday (Shashi, 2005). Is it that the impact of the concerted effort is not effective at all? Or is it that the work of the organizations is only but partial? Why do children continue pouring into the streets despite the work of charity? There is a big problem, because every day you wake up, you encounter hundreds of street children moving and eking a living up and down the streets of Nairobi. This study found out that institutionalization used alone will not curb street children in Nairobi County. Institutionalization is only addressing the eruptions, the real volcano keep on boiling and producing more eruptions. The argument in this paper is for how long are we going to keep addressing the eruptions (street children) when the volcano continues to fuelled by the ingredients like poverty, diseases, and mushrooming slums? This paper explains why interventions in place to curb street children are not working in Kenya. Key Words: Street Children, Institutionalization, Education, Rehabilitation, Pedagogy, Volcano

The Relevance of Social Work Education for Social Development in Kenya

This paper interrogates the contribution of professional Social work education towards social development in Kenya. It is believed that fundamental to understand social work involves understanding its educational requirements. Social work education and Social work profession offers a varied preparation at many levels (Ginsberg, 2001). Education is available at every educational level from the community college through to doctorate. Education and training is important because it is the preparatory phase for social work practice. The extent to which professional social workers execute their mandates and roles in society is principally dependent on the adequacy and relevance of the preparation they receive in terms of training and education. Therefore, to fully understand the relevance of this profession’s contribution to social development in Kenya, it is paramount to understand what is involved in preparing the Social work professional, it is important to appreciate the comprehensive nature of the education needed to obtain a degree in social work. To ascertain this, a census of 15 Higher Institutions of Learning (HIL) that train social workers and opinions of stakeholders of the profession in Kenya were sought and presented in this paper. The results indicate that the majority of the Social Work HIL in Kenya are public universities which constituted 53%. This states the commitment of the government of Kenya in training social workers who play a huge role in closing social development gaps. Private universities are represented by 27% of the HIL that were surveyed. The remaining 20% are middle level colleges which also train social workers, especially at diploma level. Social work has the potential to fill the gaps in social development if academic preparation of professionals in this discipline is effectively regulated and curricula designed to suit the countries social development needs. Keywords: Social work, Social development, Education, Higher Institutions of Learning, Curricula.

Preferred Types of Academic Websites Accessed and Used by Students at Maasai Mara University During 2012/2013 Academic Year

Advancement in technologies has led to the migration of print information to web in universities. Maasai Mara University (MMU) is investing highly on web-based information resource to meet the growing needs of their users and supplement their limited library print collection. Despite this effort, there has been low usage of academic websites by students. This paper seeks to determine range and form of academic websites accessed and used by MMU students.  The paper used the survey research design to collect the views and opinions of respondents. The target population was 4,947 students in which a sample of 362 students participated in the study. Data was collected using questionnaires and participant-observation and analyzed using descriptive and hierarchical linear methods for quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Presentation of data used descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages. The findings revealed that although the students visited varied academic websites including institutional, scholarly, research, educational and academic library websites, majority preferred scholarly websites. Study and learning, assignments and research were cited as main reasons for using academic websites. The findings established that relevancy of a site is the major determinant preference Maasai Mara University students choose when they access and use academic websites. The study concluded that Maasai Mara University students demonstrated a reasonably high level of awareness and use of academic websites. From the findings the study recommended that MMU library develops comprehensive continuous training programs that address information retrieval and literacy skills for its patrons on effective identification, selection, access and use of academic websites and that the university invest in more computer laboratories and high-speed internet bandwidth to ease access and use to academic websites. Keywords: Academic websites, websites, web-based information resources, librar