African Solutions For Africa Program (ASAP), is a youth education and training program that focuses on primary and secondary school going students between the ages of 12 and 18. ASAP’s work can be divided into three areas: mentorship, institutional programs and community engagement. Mentorship is core to our strategy. ASAP focuses on equipping these students with pertinent skills and abilities that are not learnt in the classroom, with an aim of empowering them to change their community, country and eventually their continent through a 15 week program.

Problem

Africa needs not just education, but quality education, that grows leaders and action oriented people. We realise that Africa is lacking in such.There are many school dropouts who lack the skills to fend for themselves and we are working to equip them with pertinent skills and knowledge at the primary and secondary school level, that is not obtained in the classroom , which will enable any young person to fend for themselves by getting employment or even starting a business. We are engaging local school communities, both the students and their parents in this transformative process that teaches them about Africa and how they can make Africa better, indeed how they can change Africa, while improving their own lives and livelihoods.

Solution

We have come up with a youth training and mentorship curriculum, that has various topics from Negative perspectives(like tribalism, perspectives on people with disabilities and people of other religions) to environmental issues for Africa and information on corruption and integrity. We also train the students on life skills that include first aid, entrepreneurship and communication. We hope that through the school training the students can go through a transformation process that opens their minds to THINK and to grow IDEAS that can first change them, then their communities, and country and eventually Africa. We hope that with time we will be able to offer video lessons on the website to be broadcast around Africa, and we are also in the process of developing a mobile application of the curriculum and training for the students we cannot reach all over Africa. Our weapon of choice is the training and mentorship curriculum,and our accompanying tools are the internet and the mobile phone. At present though, we are focusing on the school visits all around Kenya.

Exemple

At present, we are working on visiting schools all around Kenya and training the willing students in the programme curriculum. The programme lasts 15 weeks, and we visit these schools for the 15 weeks and work with the students present. Since the programme is a transformative process, we maintain that only the students present at the beginning will be allowed to complete the training process. Through this process, we also try to group the students and guide them to come up with community changing projects for their specific communities and at the end of the program, we showcase the work we have done and the projects the students have come up with. We also support and implement the best and most viable projects that the students have come up with.

Marché

There are several NGOs in the education sector in Kenya today, and many of them are focusing on sponsorships for students to be able to attend school. Those that are doing skills training are not, unlike us, carrying it out from a mentorship perspective. ASAP is a project run by six students from the University of Nairobi, and the curriculum and mentorship angle are what makes us different from the rest of the NGOs. The rest have older people who may not easily relate with the students in the schools, and further, the format and direction they use may not be as comprehensive as the curriculum.