Based in Kenya, Education for All Children (EFAC) provides wholesome support (scholarships, mentoring and career development) to high potential youth from vulnerable backgrounds. With a strong belief in the power of education and the capacity of young people to succeed despite their circumstances, EFAC currently provides comprehensive support to 600 scholars from 47 counties from Form 1 in high school all the way through university and into jobs.

“Our main focus is to bridge the poverty gap by making sure that education is the vehicle that propels young people to a better life. So we provide scholarships for that but we also have a very strong mentoring program where we ensure that these kids, because they are coming from a place where they see the future as very dark or blurred, we are able to provide light for them. So we provide mentoring right from when they join the program and throughout, so they have someone walking and working with them. We provide a lot of life skills training along the way to make sure they are empowered to change their circumstances and not to run away from their circumstances.”

Their year long recruitment process is carried out in collaboration with grassroot and community organisations, community leaders and school teachers and administrators who support the identification of vulnerable young people with leadership potential, high level of resilience and vested interest in their communities. The program itself is rich, covering not only state required curriculum but building emotional intelligence, incorporating wellness and instilling human centred design thinking approach to solutions.

“Our big dream for an EFAC scholar is we want to see a scholar that is a change maker and a leader firstly. We want to make sure that at the end of the journey they are placed in the workforce and they stand out. We want them to have strong families as well. So that’s our big vision – that they have a job, they are able to support themselves and their families, they are leaders and initiating things that are transformative in their communities. You can be employable but you also have to be able to design the future that you want. So through this program, we help them to design that future that they want. Our mission is to lead the kids to build competencies they need for the world of work and also help them discover themselves through this process.”

For EFAC, 2020 was set up to be like any other year but the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and Kenya’s response to it put a spanner in the works. We chatted to Blair Demers, Executive Director and Mary Kiguru, the Country Director about EFAC’s support to its scholars during this unprecedented time and what unfolds is a story of tenacity, determination and adaptability not only for the organisation but for its scholars.

“We are an education program that puts students in schools and when schools are closed every part of our process is interrupted. We also have residential bridge workshops also happening four times a year and when gatherings and convenings can’t happen, obviously we had to pivot to virtual webinars for these workshops. We also usually have our admissions intake, coming up in October/November. We would normally be taking about 100 form 1 scholars who would start school in January 2021 but this year we will not have an intake because all students in Kenya will be repeating their grade or class level from 2020. So for us it’s quite a unique situation.”

The countrywide lockdown as a response to the pandemic placed 340 secondary school EFAC scholars out of school and forced its post-secondary scholars in university to leave their hostels, go home and figure out how to pivot to online learning. EFAC’s quick response was a food relief initiative targeting younger scholars living in urban slums. For distribution, they leveraged primary school foundations.

The second initiative was a digital access campaign through which 340 phones loaded with educational software were distributed across Kenya. And get this, EFAC scholars themselves worked together to get this initiative off the ground and running! A group of ten scholars assisted in putting the phones together and also finding the most efficient way to distribute them. Through these phones, scholars now have access to the Kenyan curriculum and other online learning tools as well as a mental health counsellor. EFAC can also run its webinars which have been adapted to focus mainly on self-awareness, empathy and motivation creating space for the scholars to motivate each other and build communities of support around each other. As Mary shares with us how important it is to keep EFAC scholars safe, connected and learning during this time, her anxiety at the thought of losing any of the EFAC scholars due to the prevailing situation is evident.

EFAC is also taking the time for some introspection taking into account the changing global economy and workforce. Like any non-profit organisation, EFAC’s work is dependent on fundraising and keeping the program operational and impactful requires that partners continue to provide the essential funding if not more.

“We immediately had concerns about recession as you know the US is really struggling with COVID-19. We have a very high rate of the virus and it is quite distracting for people and intense. We worried that some of our donors or potential new donors would really be turning their attention elsewhere with their funding but what we found actually is that the people that are committed to EFAC really doubled down during the pandemic. They have been incredibly consistent, incredibly generous, our foundations that support have given us extra money. A lot of people have said what do you need, how can we help? That has been amazing for us.”

Blair certainly does not take the generosity and support of EFAC’s sponsors lightly especially at this time. EFAC’s sponsor program model where individual sponsors commit to an EFAC scholar and build a relationship with the young person has proven to be a great story of commitment and loyalty during one of the greatest global crisis in the last decade. The commitment from its major sponsors and foundations through its multi-year giving model has remained unwavering. While its funding success may be attributed to some luck, it is also clear that there is a very trusting relationship between EFAC and its donors. A relationship that has been built on the foundation of the value of EFAC’s mission and nurtured by transparent and honest communication between EFAC and its partners.

EFAC’s resilience and response to this pandemic is in so many ways a miniature of what we find across the continent at this very moment. A brief pause to recalibrate followed by a tremendous amount of innovation and creativity marked by a will to find solutions and reduce the impact of the pandemic not only for one’s self; but for the whole community.

You can check out EFAC’s work at Education For All Children and you can catch the changemaking story of their scholars each week on the Education For All Children Facebook Page

Images by EFAC