Paula Meyer, Author at Friends of Ngong Road

December 7, 2022 By Paula Meyer Leave a Comment

Notes from Paula

2022 was the first year of our 2022 – 2026 strategic plan for Friends of Ngong Road. Our headline goals in the five-year strategic plan are:

to double our impact in Kenya, and
transition from volunteer leadership to a sustainable staff-led model.

Double our impact. To double our impact means we must recruit more sponsors or find new ways of supporting children’s education. We knew by mid-year that this goal will be our most challenging to achieve within this strategic plan. Our goal this year was to recruit 70 new sponsorships and by the end of November, we had added 33, so we expect to be at about 50% of goal by year-end. We have formed a team to develop new tactics for increasing the number of children in the program and in 2023 you will learn more about these initiatives, some which include adding students without a 1:1 sponsor relationship. We know we are going to have to be creative and open-minded as we seek to increase the number of children getting our support in their life transformation journey.

Hire and onboard an Executive Director. Carole Patrikakos joined Friends of Ngong Road in April, and we are all working together to transition duties from volunteers to Carole and other members of staff in a measured, effective cadence. Carole is a very experienced development professional and has a significant assignment to broaden fund-raising efforts and build a robust development program. We successfully raised a $400,000 transition fund to support our leadership transition over the next few years. I am grateful for Carole’s increasing leadership in Friends of Ngong Road, allowing me to step back from some day-to-day duties.

Prepare Infrastructure to support more students. We accomplished several important operations-oriented milestones in 2022. In Kenya, we opened Elimu Hub, a student resource center including an expanded library/meeting room and a well-equipped computer lab. We completed year two of a three-year technology transformation project, including significant data clean-up of student records and a transition to out-of-the-box SalesForce technology for case management. We have streamlined case management in Kenya and donation processing in the U.S., allowing our lean global staff to focus on value-added activities.

Enhance governance in Kenya. We have been engaged in a year-long effort to enhance committees and governance in Kenya. This will culminate with the addition of three new Kenyan board members in January 2023. We are optimistic that the growing number of capable Kenyans who are engaged in our mission will add increasing value. Our management team in Kenya is by far the strongest it has been since our inception.

Build Employment Programs in Kenya. To accomplish our vision of life transformation, students must be educated and get jobs. In 2022, we hired a full-time, experienced professional in Kenya to help graduates get jobs. She is having a big impact, both on recent graduates and on our 183 alumni as they try to get better jobs. We launched a technology internship called TechMates and have processed about 18 recent college graduates through this internship. They learn WordPress (used to build websites) and get hands-on practical experience with our websites and working with clients. We delivered an entrepreneurial skills training pilot and will build on learnings from these new initiatives in 2023.

And finally, a word about Karibu Loo. Launched as a pilot in 2015, Karibu Loo is a commercial portable sanitation business with two goals: to employ graduates and to donate profits to support our charitable mission in Kenya. The business faced significant challenges during the pandemic but has made great progress in 2022, landing a long-term contract with the British Army in late 2022 which will extend into 2023. Seven of our eight full-time employees (the exception is our long-serving Business Manager) are program alumni and we have provided short-term employment to nearly 200 high school students and recent graduates. In 2023, Karibu Loo made progress on repaying past-due shared expenses to Ngong Road Children’s Foundation and in 2023 we are targeting a financial contribution equivalent to 5% of Kenya’s operating expenses. At this writing, Karibu Loo is the largest provider of portable sanitation in Nairobi.

As a supporter of this organization, I hope this helps you gain perspective on the reach of Friends of Ngong Road and Ngong Road Children’s Foundation and on our many accomplishments in 2022. In addition to the students we directly support, our work in Kenya has a direct impact on thousands of people – our employees, vendors, teachers, families of children in the program, and more. Thank you for being part of this good work!

Paula

March 24, 2022 By Paula Meyer Leave a Comment

Employment Initiatives

In 2021, Friends of Ngong Road conducted a survey of our first 113 alumni and learned that 80% of alumni had one or more jobs between May 2020 – May 2021. This was an especially challenging time for employment due to the effects of COVID-19 restrictions on the Kenyan economy. While encouraging to learn such a high percentage of alumni had had jobs, at the time of the survey, only 46% of respondents were employed. Among those employed 76% had a job in the formal economy. Among the unemployed, 90% had worked in the informal economy, and when COVID hit, their work disappeared.

The new emphasis on employment, an updated mission statement

These results led our board of directors to conclude we must do better. Since our inception, we have understood that Kenya’s formal economy has very high unemployment levels (about 40%) and that this last stage of life transformation, employment, would be the most challenging. We have now made “employment” a fourth program pillar in our overall strategy (along with Education, Student Health & Well-Being, and Supportive Community) and updated our mission statement to reflect our increased focus on helping graduates get and keep a job. Our revised mission statement is:

We empower Nairobi children living in poverty to transform their lives through education and support, leading to employment.

Programs to support employment objective
We currently have several initiatives in place or in development that support our goal of ensuring 75% of the alumni are employed within six months of graduation. Some of these programs begin in high schools, such as Life Skills training and learning about career options. Other programs are focused on high school and post-secondary graduates, including:

Job placement through the support of the Kenyan Board of Directors who make referrals to organizations within their network.
Karibu Loo Associate program– Karibu Loo (KL) is a portable sanitation business (owned by FoNR) that hires our graduates as part-time associates to help with the business’s operations, learning organization skills, time management, and working as part of a team. Karibu Loo has also hired graduates for full-time roles in marketing and operations. Since its inception, more than 120 graduates have been employed by KL.
Sales Academy – an intensive two-month sales training and six-month paid internship through a partnership with Yusudi Sales Academy. Two students will join this program in April as a pilot to see how successful it will be.
TechMates Program – A tech internship program where STEM Graduates are taken through an “on-the-job training” on digital marketing, website development, and management using WordPress, Google Ads, as well as advanced programming. The interns are later linked with external companies for contract jobs.
Entrepreneurship training – Targeting alumni who are interested in starting a small enterprise by providing basic business creation training and linking them to funding opportunities.

Elsewhere in this newsletter, you will find more information about the TechMates Program. In the next five years, we expect to launch more initiatives focused on helping graduates get jobs. We know that when you begin life in extreme poverty the only way your life is truly transformed is if you get (and keep) a job.

December 15, 2021 By Paula Meyer 2 Comments

Letter from Paula

Dear Friends,

In 2021, the Friends of Ngong Road Board of Directors concluded a strategic planning process that will guide our work for the next five years, from 2022-2026. We have made significant changes in our Mission and Vision to better reflect how the program is running today, and where we will need to focus our energy over the next five years.

UPDATED MISSION STATEMENT: recognizes the importance of employment in life transformation

“Empower Nairobi children living in poverty to transform their lives through education and support leading to employment.”

VISION: outlines our aspirations for the next five years

Double our Impact in Kenya
- Double the number of active students in the program from 375 to 750
- Increase the number of alumni from 125 to 325.
- The program will then have affected 1000+ students.

Improve employment outcomes
- Enhance existing programs supportive of employment: Life Skills Training (high school); computer skills training (high school graduates); guidance counseling (high school); and alumni program. New initiatives will include TechMates internships; entrepreneurship training; and an expanded placement office.
- Achieve the goal of 75% or more of graduates employed within six months of program completion

Ensure organizational sustainability
- Implement streamlined operations (technology, program, process)
- Define and implement the post-founder operating model and organization structure
- Ensure a sustainable financial infrastructure
Define earned income strategy
- Evaluate Karibu Loo Limited’s strategic future – grow, hold or divest
- Consider other earned income opportunities

SHARED VALUES AND CULTURE: shape how we act

Our values:

Respect
Teamwork
Integrity
Student-Focused
Reach Higher

Our culture:

We have a purpose
We care
We drive results
We learn together

An exciting and challenging five years lie ahead.

Thank you for your continued support as we make progress against our vision objectives.

Gratefully,

Paula R. Meyer

President

September 18, 2021 By Paula Meyer Leave a Comment

Letter from Paula

Dear friends,

Our mission since inception has been to support life transformation through education and ultimately employment. In 2021, we have come to believe we must increase our focus and effectiveness on the employment dimension of our mission.

Much of the employment in Kenya is called “casual”. Since there aren’t enough job opportunities in the formal Kenyan economy, people must create their own employment to survive. Most families of students in our program support themselves with casual labor. At the low end, this means cooking food to sell in the slums or running a small kiosk, or doing day construction labor. If you are educated, casual labor may be a contract or temporary work.

In May 2021, Friends of Ngong Road conducted a survey of alumni that we call The First 100. We surveyed 112 alumni of the program and received 95 responses. We learned that:

80% of alumni have had one or more jobs in the past twelve months.
At the time of the survey, only 46% of alumni were employed. Among that group, more than 80% had a job in the formal economy.
Among the unemployed, more than 70% had been working in the casual economy and when COVID hit, their work disappeared.
59% of alumni are supporting at least one other person – a child, a parent, a sibling.

Our conclusions are that we must provide more support to help students gain employment in the formal Kenyan economy. Kenya’s employment picture is certainly not at its best due to COVID-19. Nonetheless, our board of directors concluded we must do better. We are working to accelerate our efforts to support long-term employment by:

Deepening our understanding of areas where job opportunities exist in Kenya and then ensuring our students are preparing themselves in areas where there are employment opportunities.
Preparing students for employment during high school by teaching them about what kinds of jobs exist and the skills needed to get those jobs, teaching self-awareness so they become more astute about where they are likely to succeed and teaching interviewing/communication skills. We call these programs Life Skills and now deliver curriculum to all four years of high school.
Redoubling our efforts to partner with employers, local board members and other Kenyan supporters to connect students to that important first job.

An educated student is much more likely to succeed than an uneducated one, but employment is the only way to truly transform lives. We will be working hard on this and sharing our findings. We support transformation through education AND employment!