Safe futures - self-reliance for 675 Kenyan girls

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