The Baraka School was a small education program that took at-risk 12-year-old boys from the Baltimore public school system to the Kenyan outback for two years to live and study. The school was located in Laikipia and the program began in 1996 with funding from the Abell Foundation, a local Baltimore philanthropy.
The program was shut down in 2003 because of security threats. After the 2002 hotel bombing in Mombasa and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the school administrators decided not to re-open the school.
The school program was featured in the 2005 documentary The Boys of Baraka.
The campus has since been transformed into Daraja Academy.
Famous quotes containing the words baraka and/or school:
“The further jazz moves away from the stark blue continuum and the collective realities of Afro-American and American life, the more it moves into academic concert-hall lifelessness, which can be replicated by any middle class showing off its music lessons.”
—Imamu Amiri Baraka (b. 1934)
“The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you’d never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1953)