Varsity students in Nakuru launch website to ease search for hostels
Students of St Paul's University Nakuru Campus who are members of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) club pose for a group photo outside their campus on July 13 2016. From left to right: Peter Maina, Adrian Tarus, Nicholas Ogega, Peter Gicheha, Simon Njaria, Peter Nderi, and Samuel Gitau. PHOTO | FRANCIS MUREITHI | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
- To help find solutions to the problem, a group of students from St Paul’s University Nakuru Campus have designed a website to help their colleagues navigate their way to good accommodation without sweating.
- The website is a game changer as it will give guardians and parents and any other visitor coming to Nakuru crucial information about the hostels as it contains maps showing the exact location of the hostels.
- The project which started early last year is now an envy of other clubs in various campuses in Nakuru Town as it is a landmark project that will solve sticky key issues that disturbs students while studying away from home.
The search for secure hostel facilities by university students in Nakuru Town has not been as easy as walking into a lecture hall.
Students spend most of their valuable learning time moving from one corner of the town to the other seeking for good accommodation, many times in vain.
To help find solutions to the problem, a group of students from St Paul’s University Nakuru Campus have designed a website to help their colleagues navigate their way to good accommodation without sweating.
The website, the first of its kind by the students in the cosmopolitan town popularly known in the social media as a “project by the comrade for the comrades” was launched on July 8 at the Nakuru Campus.
The latest innovation by the youngest campus in town is a project of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) club.
It is now the talk of the town as hundreds of students engage in lively discussions about it on social media platforms.
“Essentially this pioneer website is targeting university and college students within and outside Nakuru town seeking for affordable and secure hostel accommodation,” explained Mr Peter Nderi, the ICT club chairperson.
The website will not only address the looming shortage of good and quality hostels but will also help the students get value for their money.
It will is also expected to put to task hostel owners to improve on their facilities.
The portal, www.nakuruhostels.co.ke, is timely, coming at a time when Nakuru town is experiencing a surge in student number seeking to join public and private universities which have set up their campuses in the region.
“The beauty of this website is that it will make lives of students easier and more convenient as we know hostel owners and their locations…this is an added advantage to university administrations as they never bothered to know where their students were staying,” Mr Nderi said.
The website is a game changer as it will give guardians and parents and any other visitor coming to Nakuru crucial information about the hostels as it contains maps showing the exact location of the hostels.
The project which started early last year is now an envy of other clubs in various campuses in Nakuru Town as it is a landmark project that will solve sticky key issues that disturbs students while studying away from home.
But it has not been a walk in the park for the ICT club members as they were not allocated any budget by the university and had to walk from one hostel to another to collect data.
“All the hostels we visited in Shabab, Section 58, Langalanga, Milimani, and other parts of the town we never used vehicles, we just walked. It was not an easy task and some of us were forced to skip lunch to make sure this project succeeds,” said Mr Nderi.
Besides those financial challenges, the hostel owners were reluctant to provide them with vital information and suspected the students were gathering the data to share with their competitors.
The ICT chairperson says the club was working on modalities on advertisement charges and was still discussing the matter with the university management.
The project which cost slightly over Sh5,000 to construct is set to become an income generating venture once more hostel owners and other stakeholders join the bandwagon and place their advertisements on the website.
Their first website version was 1.1 and later improved it to version 2.0 which is data driven and are currently working on version 3.0 which will be more professional.
In the last semester when the rest of the students went home for holidays, the group was forced to stay behind and pay for the services of a skilled web designer who trained them on key processes of web design.
One of the hostel owners Mr Philip Wachira hailed the decision to set up the website saying it is a great innovation and that it will make investors up their game and upgrade their facilities.
Nakuru campus Principal Dr Paul Gesimba said that the project was testimony that students with creative and innovative minds can create employment for themselves before they graduate.
They may not have completed the website to the professional standards at least for now, but the fighting spirit of St Paul’s University students Nakuru campus is worth emulating by the rest of the students in town.
