SEAM (Self Education And Mentorship) Program

We at SEAM have finally come to the end of our youth and parents, HIV prevention training. We have received positive feedback from both the parents and their children, who feel they have gained a generous amount of knowledge on HIV/AIDs prevention, and knowledge on how to engage with their children in the fight to prevent this deadly virus.

The horticultural club has been preparing seedlings of vegetables in their shed-net in readiness for the planting season. The club had trainings in different vegetable planting techniques, which each member will launch in their homes as kitchen gardens. They are also preparing for an upcoming Kenya Horticultural Society, Kisumu plant sale.

We also had a charity event where we gave out blankets and cutlery to members who the community who were in need.

SEAM has had a productive year despite the covid-19 pandemic. We have managed to provide the children and their parents with our services while observing all Covid protocols.

We are continuing with our HIV/AIDS awareness project. We have currently completed our trainings with the children and adolescents, and are now providing trainings and psychoeducation to the parents, on how to become effective participants in their children’s lives when in come to HIV/AIDS preventions. These services have been provided outdoors while ensuring mask and sanitization protocols and observing public gathering rules, with regards to number of people permitted.

We are also continuing with our founding agendas of self-sustainability, climate change impacts, life skills & economic empowerment, while remembering to always use mental health and health in general as our guiding compass.  

 The youth are also carrying on with their farming and tree nursery projects where they continue to learn about their environments and ways of preserving them. We hope this road will lead down the path to programmes where the children can learn more about climate change, and what roles they can play to help make a difference. We are teaching them about the carbon prints we all contribute towards and what changes the future holds for us all.

The children are returning to the program and their activities in a controlled manner. No more than a handful of children are allowed to come in at a time, however, activities are back to normal. The older ones are learning how to mentor the younger children. They are all continuing with their environmental programs, and study time is still a favorite for the children so we have introduced some new books for them.

This year we also plan to introduce a new program. Our focus with this program will be HIV/AIDS- education that will target the youth aged 10-19, and will also involve an educational session/program for the parents (mothers). Part of this program will involve the introduction of technology that will assess the youth’s knowledge on HIV/AIDS and also provide a platform where they can access information about the virus. The program will be extended to non-SEAM member of the community.

We hope to raise more awareness about the virus and hopefully prevent our children/youth from falling prey to a problem that is very prevalent in the community.  

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have had to be very careful about what activities we allow at the site. And, because our children are rural children with little to no access to technology, we have been unable to provide cyber activities.

However, this has not stopped us from making improvements at the site in preparation for the kids, when things become safe again. These include managing and expanding the variety of foods in the gardens, and improving the sanitation facilities on site.

Because we do have activities that the children can take part in outside, we still allow them to visit the site in very small groups, and remain outdoors. This we feel allows them to stay involved in some of the activates they had been so involved in prior to the pandemic, creating a sense of continuity even during these uncertain times.

With that being said, our desire to provide an environment where the children can learn, play, grown and generally focus on their mental health remains unchanged.