Empowering Students
Many students in the Umoja family have lost one or both parents; extra encouragement and mentoring are essential to their success. Umoja’s empowerment teams allow students to envision a productive future and provide tools to ensure they achieve the best of their abilities. Our local staff members lead 42 empowerment teams across 21 partner schools.
1,141
students in
GET UP
20% of our students have lost one or both of their parents
1,224
students in
BET UP
GET UP Teams
Created in 2012, our Girls Empowerment Team – Umoja Project (GET UP) connects girls with mentors and peer groups, adding stability for girls who may not have family role models, while teaching productive personal relationships and career options for women. Our young women face enormous obstacles to completing school and securing stable employment
- Societal norms discourage girls from believing that they have rights and privileges equal to the boys.
- Family responsibilities affect girls’ ability to attend school regularly and to use their evenings for study.
- Sexual exploitation often leads to pregnancy and dropping out of school.
GET UP addresses girls’ needs through programs focusing on health education, positive relationships, life skills, and girls’ rights. Community women are trained to serve as mentors, and professional women provide vocational guidance.
BET UP Teams
Created in 2018, we implemented an empowerment program for boys with similar goals to the girls of improving academic performance and improving personal relationship skills. Our Boys Empowerment Team – Umoja Project (BET UP) provides a safe environment for young men to learn goal setting, career planning, and healthy relationships under the mentorship of male role models.
Our young men are faced with cultural and socioeconomic challenges such as:
- History of gender bias in the Kenyan culture
- Temptations of peer pressure, drug use, and substance abuse
- High unemployment rates
BET UP fills a need to focus on equal opportunities for boys and girls, as well as assisting young men in understanding personal health and hygiene, maximizing career opportunities, and understanding socioeconomic and cultural realities.
Guardian Empowerment
We recognize that to create lasting change, we must engage not just with the children, but also with their parents and guardians. Our Guardian Empowerment Program is an important component of our strategy to transform the students’ lives we support. Our programs for guardians are designed to mirror the lessons we teach our students, ensuring that the values of empowerment, education, and respect are reinforced at home.
Our guardian group consists of over 1,500 members. We offer training in income-generating activities such as table banking (micro-finance) and small business management to help guardians become more financially stable. By improving the economic landscape of our families, we reduce the number of obstacles often in the way of their children attending school.
We recognize the unique challenges that come with raising orphaned and vulnerable children, so we also provide foster parent/guardian training. Our training helps foster parents create supportive and nurturing environments where children can thrive. This holistic approach ensures that the empowerment we strive for in our partner schools is continued and supported at home.
Impacts of Empowerment Programs:
Students enrolled in the BET UP and GET UP programs consistently lived out the impacts of positive mentoring:
- Higher academic performances
- Increased graduation rates from secondary school
- Increased matriculation to post-secondary education
- Understanding personal health and hygiene
- Preparation for career opportunities and higher education
- Resilience against substance abuse and unhealthy personal relationships
- Drastically reduced teen pregnancy occurrence
