RUTH Smith has been made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to communities in Jersey and Kenya.
Like many other people, Mrs Smith came to Jersey not planning to stay long, but finding her plans soon changing.
She was 23 years old and just out of university, and expected to spend two or three years in the Island as a youth worker and part-time teacher. That was in 1973.
But the now 74-year-old teacher has not spend all of the intervening 51 years in Jersey. She has also spent some of it in Kenya, helping to run a school there and provide an education for some desperately poor children.
She sees education as a sure route out of poverty, saying: “If you can’t read, you’re seriously stuck.”
Mrs Smith taught A-level English and psychology in various Jersey schools and remembers noticing many pupils who could neither spell nor punctuate.
She realised that they had dyslexia, a difficulty less understood then than it is now.
She ran Jersey Dyslexia Association for many years. “We had a helpline and we ran courses and conferences for teachers, parents and children. We got a lot of calls from people who had been told their child was dyslexic and didn’t know what to do. We ran dyslexia in the workplace conferences for 200 employers and HR people.”
Mrs Smith also set up a youth club in Trinity which grew so quickly that, after two years, it had to move into new, purpose-built premises. She was leader in charge for ten years.
Then, in 2014, she decided to take a gap year to visit Australia, South Africa and Kenya, during which she set up a school in the Kenyan town of Malindi.
She said: “I set up my own school in 2015 which I financed myself, intending it to be an early-years school because so many children were not in school. Now, there are almost 300 pupils, up to Year 6, and 18 staff.”
It does not just provide an education. She noted: “Those children were very hungry. I set up a porridge programme and then a lunch programme – not just beans and rice, but proper nutritional lunches.”
Some of the government-run schools in Kenya can have up to 100 children to a class but the school in Malindi is careful to control ratios of levels of pupils, so that classes are no larger than 35.
It is registered as a charity in Jersey called The Friends of Malindi Bright Future Academy. Mrs Smith has been going back ever since, usually for three months at a time, and is next due to visit early in the new year. She also supports the school with proceeds from sales of her children’s story books about Twinkle the Donkey, illustrated by local artist Anita Eastwood.
And at a time when most teachers have long since retired, Mrs Smith’s belief in the value of education keeps her working, offering private tuition to those who need it. “I still have my pupils,” she says.
“I’m very proud to be honoured.”
