Safe futures - self-reliance for 675 Kenyan girls

Hello,

We just wanted to send a short update to let you know what's happening in Kenya, and to say thank you. Your kindness means young people are waking up this morning with a safe place to learn and get support. Previously they had nowhere to turn, no employment skills and no pathway to a brighter future.

Thanks to your support, and our incredible team of teachers and staff in Kenya, they have dignity, opportunity and hope.

In total this year we have already supported and trained 749 students - that’s more than the previous 10 years combined, and we still have more students joining us before the end of the year!!

In these incredibly challenging times we hope you know that your support and donations are valued and appreciated by young people hundreds of miles away who may never know you, but they feel your support every single day and will do long into their futures.

Thank you for being part of our small but mighty family, ensuring young people have the opportunity to learn, get a job or start a business and become self-reliant, free from poverty.

“Seed of Hope has provided love, something to do, and something to hope for” - Seed of Hope Graduate 2022

In other news Florence (Seed of Hope Manager) and Mary (Operations Director) were at the Women's Leadership Conference in Mombasa, Kenya last week.

They gave a presentation on our Seed of Hope vocational and business skills training programme for young people, focusing on the support we offer girls and young women. They were part of the panel discussion on "Uneven Losses, Uneven Recovery - The Covid-19 Employment crisis from a Sexual and Gender Based Violence Perspective". Their presentation recieved high praise and they have been asked to join the next international conference.

Thank you once again for being part of our extended team. As a small charity we appreciate you choosing to support us, thank you.

Have a lovely week.

With best wishes

Mary, Florence, Kirsty, Leela and Natalie
Raising Futures Kenya Team

kirsty@raisingfutureskenya.org.uk
www.raisingfutureskenya.org.uk

279 students graduate their course in Jan-Jun 2022!

This has been yet another exciting 6 months for us in Kenya! From January to June this year 279 young people aged 14-25 (75% girls) have completed their technical vocational, or business skills, training course at our 3 Seed of Hope centres. 

They’ve gained the skills, qualification and confidence they need to secure a job or start a business, and be on the road to a life free from poverty.

This is only the second time we’ve enrolled students on our new condensed courses, which are half the previous duration. This cohort is already double the number of students we used to support in a year, and we’ve still got another cohort of students to join us for the next 6 months! 

The course duration was changed in response to a community needs assessment in November 2020, where community members and prospective students said they couldn’t commit to a long full-time course as they needed to earn money to survive. We halved the length of our courses, by not aligning with school holidays, and introduced a new 2 month short course for those wanting to learn business, finance and computer skills without needing to learn a skilled trade. 

This has resulted in an unprecedented enrolment in our courses and seen the highest number of students we’ve ever had.  In the year since this new course structure began in July 2021, 591 young people have graduated their courses at Seed of Hope. That’s almost the same as the previous 4 years combined! 

Our added support, to remove any barriers young people face in being able to attend their lessons, is very popular and what sets us apart from other technical vocational training centres.  From January to June 2022: 

• 18,699 lunches have been provided, for many this is the only meal they’ll eat all day
• Bags of rice have been given out every Friday since October 2021 to support the families of 200 students suffering from the drought and huge increase in food prices (3rd photo below)
• 2,037 individual counselling sessions have been given to students to help them cope with past trauma and wellbeing issues. This is alongside the daily group counselling sessions offered as part of the Life Skills sessions
• 55 young mothers have been given a weekly childcare voucher to enable them to arrange suitable childcare so they can attend their lessons (2nd photo below)
• 2,765 packs of sanitary packs have been given out to girls (a pack every month) to ensure being on their period doesn’t stop them from attending their lessons (1st photo below)
• 46 graduates in Kitui have used our new Educational Business Hub to run their businesses from, making use of the tools, equipment and computers available for free to help them get their business started.

Thank you for helping us change the lives of these young people. It means a lot to them to know there are people in their corner who believe in them.

Best wishes,

Florence Olwenge (Seed of Hope Manager) and Kirsty Erridge (CEO)
Raising Futures Kenya

www.raisingfutureskenya.org.uk

Links:

• Blog post with more photos from the graduates

Hello and thank you so much for your continued support of our Seed of Hope programme!

In December 2021 and January 2022, 221 girls and young women graduated from the 2021 Seed of Hope cohort. Students from three centres across Kenya came together to celebrate our most sucessful year yet in terms of student numbers at Seed of Hope. Seed of Hope staff, family and friends attended the ceremonies and alumni joined us to share their stories and inspire recent graduates. There was a real air of celebration with dancing, singing and smiles all around and young people with a sense of pride and hope for the future - thank you for helping make this happen. 

One of the newer elements of the Seed of Hope programme is the introduction of childcare vouchers for any students (mostly girls and young women) with dependents. This was introduced when we heard that many young women struggled to attend classes due to caring responsibiliites. Every student with children now recieves a voucher that they can use towards the cost of childcare. One of the young women who recieved the vouchers told us "I have never imagined somone giving me money for taking care of my child as I learn for free without paying a single cent. I feel like crying, for the first time in my life I feel love"

Our team has worked hard in the early weeks and months of the year to recruit the first cohort of 2021 with 215 students in total enrolled, 114 of which are girls and young women. With our new shorter courses this is just one of the multiple cohorts that will pass through the Seed of Hope training centres in 2022. 

For our Nairobi students, this will be the final year that they are learning from makeshift classrooms and old shipping containers - with our plans to build a brand new, accesible and purpose built centre on our Nairobi site taking shape and with around 15% of our budget left to fundraise for. You can find out more about this by checking out our GlobalGiving project 'Skills training centre for 14-25 yr olds - Nairobi' .

We are as always so grateful for your continued support and can't wait to update you again soon. 

Kind regards, 

Florence Olwenge and Vic Hancock Fell 

Links:

• Read more about the plans for our new SOH centre in Nairobi
• Take a look at our Global Giving project for the Nairobi build

A big hello from all of us at Raising Futures Kenya and Seed of Hope,

The last 18 months have been incredibly challenging for our staff and teachers in Kenya who have worked tirelessly to ensure our students were still able to receive their education - even though the training centres were closed for a total of 9 months over two national lockdowns. 

We are so proud of what we have accomplished this year with your support. After only being able to re-open after the second lockdown, in July 2021 we have enrolled a total of 336 students, our highest enrolment numbers ever, with a third cohort of Entrepreneurial, Financial Literacy and Computer (EFC) Skills (EFC) students joining us in November!

A snapshot of our year so far (and only since July!): 

• 20,004 Life Skills/Mental Health Wellbeing sessions attended 
• 17,899 Group counselling sessions attended
• 2,961 Individual counselling sessions received
• 19,592 lunches received
• 959 menstrual hygiene packs received
• 119 young mothers supported with childcare vouchers 

Seed of Hope teachers have also spent 2 months this year rewriting curriculums to form new condensed vocational training courses.  This means students can gain their qualifications and begin earning an income quicker.  Crucially it also means we can teach double the number of students each year for minimal additional cost, doubling our impact in the local communities.  

We have developed a new short course (2 months long, to be run 6 times a year) in Entrepreneurial, Financial Literacy and Computer (EFC) Skills for young people who want to learn the practical skills in starting and managing a successful small business.  This has meant recruiting 3 new highly qualified entrepreneurship and computer teachers.  Since launching this short course, 115 young people have already graduated.

With the free support of a UK based marketing business, we also rebranded Seed of Hope in Kenya so it has a new bright, engaging logo and brand colours to increase its appeal to young people.  We invested in infrastructure improvements including much-needed repainting at our Seed of Hope centres in Kitui and Murang’a counties, and building temporary classrooms in Nairobi to accommodate more students.

Thank you for your continued part in making this happen. We really couldn't do any of this without you. 

With gratitude,

Vic Hancock Fell and Florence Olwenge 

vic@raisingfutureskenya.org.uk, florence@raisingfutureskenya.org.uk

Hello,

I hope you are well?

It's been an exciting few weeks here. We have welcomed our new cohort of students to Seed of Hope, the first time since January 2020! We also have some new Seed of Hope teachers who are very experienced and excited to be welcoming the new students.  As part of a partnership with Enviral, an ethical brand marketing agency based in Bristol UK, they created a new logo and brand colours for Seed of Hope which has been very welcomed in the communities. You can read more about Seed of Hope below.

Last month we welcomed a new cohort of Seed of Hope students who will be studying; Motor Vehicle Mechanics, Catering and Hospitality, Hair and Beauty, Carpentry and Joinery and Fashion & Fabric Design. We also launched a new short 7 week course to teach business skills, financial literacy and computer skills at all three centres. This has been so popular in Nairobi we have had to create a second class!

We still have students registering to join the courses. After months of disruption from COVID-19 we're delighted so many are returning to education, especially girls.

The students decided they wanted to update their uniforms, from the usual blue shirt, so helped to design some new t-shirts, which match the new brand colour for Seed of Hope and are comfortable for them to learn in.

As part of launching the new courses we decided to refresh the Seed of Hope branding too. Enviral kindly offered to do this for us for free. They created a great new logo and colour scheme which has been used on all the new signage at the centres. The classrooms have also had a long-needed refresh and have been painted in the new bright colours.

We have launched a new Seed of Hope website which is specifically aimed at young people in Kenya to learn more about the courses available to them. If you'd like to read more about the courses we offer you can do so here www.seedofhopekenya.org.

In other news, we have just published our Annual Report and Accounts for 2020 - if you would like to have a look please visit our website here. It was the hardest year we've ever had to face and we couldn't have done it without you. Thank you for your unwavering support.

Best wishes

Kirsty
Co-Director 
kirsty@raisingfutureskenya.org.uk
www.raisingfutureskenya.org