Provide Job Skills to Kenyan Slum Youth

Dear friends,

My warmest wishes to you and your families at the start of this new year. We begin 2016 with an on-going commitment to support the youth who reside in the slums around Nyeri town. We are hopeful this year will bring success in our efforts to raise funds, expand our programming, address the vast need within this community and unlock the potential of the youth we serve.

As a really small community-based charity, SYSC relies entirely on the funds it raises through Global Giving to support its operations. In 2015, your generosity allowed us to run two projects: reproductive health education and computer skills training. 

Although we raised only a third of the $3000 dollar budget planned for the reproductive health care project, we are proud to have provided education, including the distribution of free family planning materials, that reached over 500 people.  We continue to use leftover educational materials within local youth, and are happy to report they are very interested in this information. This gives hope that we may be able to help turnaround the serious issues that youth are experiencing from lack of education, like high rates of teenage pregnancy and sex trade participation.

The $1300 dollars raised toward job skills training this year were used to deliver a computers skills training program for 24 youth. Thanks to your support we were able to secure internet connectivity and include web literacy in our project for the first time.  This is a hugely popular training program amongst youth, who know how important computer skills are to finding secure work. To reach more participants, we will are seeking funding so we can buy six additional computers to expand the program.  This will be one of our priorities for 2016.

We also continued to run our music program, which teaches youth how to play an instruments, provides some music theory and offers the many side benefits proven to come with participant in the arts, like increased morale and self-regard.  Without funding, the program has been on and off due to the difficulty of finding a volunteer teacher. But we are thrilled to have now secured a volunteer teacher from Kimathi University, Nyeri. To cover his travel expenses of approximately $25 USD a month and be able to sustain the program, we have advertised lessons in all town schools for those who can afford to pay for $1 a lesson. We will also continue to provide free lessons for those without means.

Quote from Joyce, 17 years old unemployed mother of one:

“I have very little education, but if you train me to do something with my hands that can earn me a living, I will also train five others.”

It is people like Joyce and donors like you who encourage Shauri Yako Community Youth Support Centre to do what we do.

Bless you abundantly.

Joe Mwai

Chair