Gender Equality Kenya Project #3807

Safe futures - self-reliance for 675 Kenyan girls

by Raising Futures Kenya

Project Report | Mar 25, 2022
An exciting year for new Seed of Hope students

By Victoria Hancock Fell | Co-Director

SOH Manager Flo hands out certificates

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

Current Nairobi site

A family celebrates

A graduate from SOH Kariti

Links:

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Nov 29, 2021
A record-breaking year!

By Vic Hancock Fell | Co-Director

Students receive menstrual health hygiene packages

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

Teacher Jescah with the new Seed of Hope branding

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Aug 4, 2021
New students join Seed of Hope

By Kirsty Erridge | Co-Director

Students in their new uniform

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

Teacher Jescah showing the new Seed of Hope logo

Freshly painted Seed of Hope Kitui

New students at Seed of Hope Nairobi

New uniform t-shirts at Seed of Hope Kariti

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