Friends of Ngong Road

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

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Lorine

Lorines’ success story is inspiring and uplifting.  As a member of the Friends of Ngong Road family, Lorine started her academic journey at Jagiet Primary School. She later did her secondary studies at St Mary’s Thigio.

She holds a certificate in Business Administration, a University diploma in Business Administration, as well as a Bachelor of Commerce with a Finance concentration from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

Lorine has made steady progress in her professional life. She participated in the Ngong Road Youth Peer Provider and Sexual and Reproductive Health Program, and she interned at Karibu Loo as an associate. She is currently employed as part of their finance team.

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Emmanuel

Emmanuel joined the program in 2010. Having to pay for his education as a child was a tremendous challenge for his family. Friends of Ngong road gave him a sponsor and enabled him to continue his academic career.

We transferred Emmanuel to one of our focus elementary schools immediately after admitting him to the program. He considered it a far better school than his previous school.

After completing his primary education, he attended a boys high school in Nairobi, where he completed his secondary education and joined the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. His graduation was originally scheduled for November last year but was postponed to July this year because of the COVID pandemic.

Emmanuel holds a Certification in Business Administration and in Business Information Technology. Emmanuel is currently interning at Ngong Road Children’s Foundation as a tech intern.

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Parents/Guardian Involvement

Parents/guardians play an important role in the transformation of a student. It is our policy that each student has a supportive parent/guardian during the child’s enrollment in the organization.

During the student selection period, the parent/guardian must fulfill several requirements. In general, they have to ensure that they provide basic needs for the children. They sign a contract agreeing to play their part in the child’s life and to support the organization in any way possible for the child’s success. The parent/guardian refreshes the contract at each level of the student’s education.

Every week, the organization holds a Saturday Program where we meet with the students and engage them in group activities. The parents/guardians must ensure that the students attend and participate. The parents/guardians also provide the organization with periodic assessment information to assess the child’s progress both at home and at school. This is a way of providing feedback to the organization on how to best support the student.

“We host an Annual General Meeting, and we expect the parents/guardians to attend.” They receive updates on the program, review their commitment to their child’s education, and are asked for their support in identifying prospective students for the program. They usually hold it at the end of the year and distribute Christmas packages of food aid to their families.

We highly appreciate all our parents/guardians for their continued effort in helping us achieve our students’ success. Their involvement contributes to the success of the students through the web of supportive adults in their lives – parents/guardians, case managers, teachers, and sponsors.

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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.

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Two Remarkable Young People:

Siblings Lorine and Emmanuel

By Susan Plimpton

Almost 15 years ago, we accepted the sponsorship of Lorine, at that time a young girl of about 10 years of age.  When I met her, she had a big smile on her face but found me a bit intimidating and looked down at the ground when I shook her hand.  Her father had died recently and her mother, also positive, was weakened by an illness.  Lorine was helping with cooking and washing while also going to school.  Even then her mother knew that a good education was the only possible way to give Lorine a chance at a better life and thus applied for sponsorship in the Ngong Road program. Over the years, Lorine gradually became more self-confident. We loved communication through email and had fun times shopping when I was in Nairobi. Several years after “adopting” Lorine I learned that her young brother, Emmanuel, was also available for sponsorship and we agreed to take him on as well. Emmanuel was a little more reserved but very motivated academically in primary school which enabled him to enter a competitive secondary school. 

Both Lorine and Emmanuel were accepted by Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology for a two-year certificate program after they completed secondary school, Lorine in Business Studies and Emmanuel in Business Information Technology. Upon completing the program, Lorine self-financed herself for a 4 year Bachelor’s degree in Business Studies and now works in a financial position at the British East African Tobacco Company in Nairobi.


Emmanuel is an IT intern at the Ngong Road Children’s Foundation, one of the first “TechMates”. He is so proficient in information technology and cyber security that he has a second internship at Lido Nation as an Intern/Junior Developer.  Emmanuel has also been invited by the Swiss non-profit organization, United People Global, to participate in a week-long leadership and sustainability program this summer at Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership in Rockland, Maine. He is hoping to obtain his U.S. visa to attend.

 My husband David and I visited Lorine and Emmanuel pre-pandemic and were so impressed and proud of the young adults they have become.  Both have matured into self-confident and poised individuals who have every intention of contributing to the development of their countries. They indeed are examples of the transformation that can be achieved by the children sponsored by Friends of Ngong Road at the Ngong Road Children’s Foundation.

 Lorine says . . .

My experience of being a beneficiary of the NRCF program has been educational, adventurous, and amazing. From the yearly camps to the overflow of support from my sponsor and the organization. NRCF has been very instrumental in shaping the woman that I have become through the Life Skills training, educational support from the beginning of my O level (grade school) to the end of my A level (high school), and also the feeding program that helped my mind be at ease over when the next meal would come. I look forward to running my own business and sponsoring a child. Again I say thank you to the organization for the opportunity.

Warm regards,

Lorine

Emmanuel says… 

My experience at Ngong Road Children’s Foundation is one where I can use two words to describe it: “grateful and thankful”. I enrolled in the program in 2010 at the age of eleven years. My academic journey hasn’t been a smooth one. In fact, I could describe it as surfing through strong ocean waves, but NRCF was always there to help me surf the tides.

How the program has positively impacted my life

The program gave me a scholarship from primary school, when young, to university for my education. NRCF also provided Life Skills training and other support programs. I am currently interning as an ICT intern in the program as a TechMate. This internship has greatly empowered me economically and upscaled my technical skills in matters concerning information technology.

What does my future look like? 

I could describe my future from the lens of an optimist. One that is promising and demanding as well. I view myself as growing even better. This could be by adding more academic qualifications to my portfolio and having reliable years of experience in the business information, and technology arena and demanding in the aspect that all the achievements I want to make will require me to push myself beyond ordinary limits. I do believe that thus far I have proven that I am capable of being and doing better and the rate at which I am growing is intensifying rather than slowing.

Thank you all,

Emmanuel