Improving lives of 1000 girls in Nairobi's slums

‘This project report is a submission to GlobalGiving’s 2017 Fail Forward Contest, where organizations are asked to share a story of when they tried something new that didn’t go as planned and how they learned from it. Enjoy!’

A couple of years ago Vijana Amani Pamoja(VAP) introduced the economic empowerment initiative through Mrembo program ( a program that empowers girls and young women with social skills e.g sexual health reproductive and rights.The economic empowerment initiative was meant to be done through integrating graduates of Mrembo social skills into vocational trainings i.e hair and beauty as well as pastry and baking courses.VAP started conducting trainings on these courses using their own internal coaches who had more experience on social lifeskills with very minimal experiences on hair and beauty as well as pastry and baking.

After a couple of four months, the 12 vocational training candidates had to graduate from their respective courses and according to the plans set aside by VAP, internship and jobplacesments with various local salons and restaurants had to be created by VAP management so that these candidates could get an opportunity to work, live and enjoy an economic independent lifestyle which is actually part of VAP’s vision ‘Creating a society that’s socially, healthy and economically empowered.’

After laying all the ground works, the internship and job placements were secured for all the 12 graduates of hair and beauty as well as pastry and baking in their respective careers with local salons and restaurants. After spending one week in their respective placements, all the candidates were sent back to VAP’s offices with information that they were not ready for the employment and entrepreneurship world by the fact that they did not have enough experience and they largely lack adequate skills for employability both theoretically and practically.

This forced the management of VAP to restructure itself and reorganize the entire vocational training courses after realizing that lack of including professional trainers for the courses and including participants’ views in designing the courses played a major role in the whole disappointment .VAP started by conducting survey, collecting stories and conducting thorough focus group discussions with all the returned candidates and other participants in the social life skills programs including teachers, parents and other community members to get their views and opinions on how they would want to see the vocational training courses conducted. Based on all the information collected, VAP management had to fully restructure the vocational training courses by including experienced external professional trainers on hair and beauty as well as pastry and baking to retrain the 12 candidates a fresh as well as another additional group of 8 girls. The trainers laid a training timetable and a curriculum for 4 months that included views from all stakeholders included both theoretical and practical sessions as well as periodical continuous assessment examination to monitor and evaluate preparedness of the candidates. After 4 months of their trainings, all 20 vocational training candidates graduated and were all placed in various job placements in their respective careers: salons and restaurants, with a few of them starting their own small businesses. Moving forward,VAP has been expanding into other courses e.g photography, and Interior design for its social lfeskills graduates by using the new approach of conducting surveys, collecting stories, conducting focus group discussion and including views from the community as well as hiring career professionals to conduct trainings for the purposes of producing well prepared candidates who are ready for the world of employment and entrepreneurship