SEAM (Self Education And Mentorship) Program

This year’s SEAM programs took off with a re-energized focus on the Self Educational Activities and Mentorships. Our children gained a lot from educational trainings on topics such as climate change, food and nutrition, HIV/AIDS, self-sustainability, community economic development, and behavior change among others. These trainings were organized through group discussions and presentations guided by our mentors and invited guest speakers. Our children have also been introduced to general computer skills by the ICT department which has impacted their knowledge on how to access the internet for SEAM’s educational trainings and learning purposes.

The SEAM mentorship programs have also focused on Arts & Crafts by a visiting artist who took the children through one-on-one art sessions to discover their talents. The children have also been introduced to yoga exercise for better health by SEAM mentors. The Horticulture Club has been going through gardening mentorship on how to prepare a garden for planting. Some of the SEAM children have adopted this knowledge to start kitchen gardens in their homes to promote self-sustainability. Similarly, the SEAM Horticulture Club had a flower sale with the Kisumu Horticulture Society where the children were given the opportunity to sell their flowers and to learn more about business strategies. Not to forget a garden tour to educate the children on different gardening techniques and to gain professional gardening knowledge.

Finally, we have recently introduced the children to book-keeping and accounting, by giving each child a passbook where they record any money they make from sales and to track on their expenses and savings. Thus, the children have learnt on the importance of book keeping.

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.