Re-engaging Learners
Providing girls and women a path to financial independence.
What is the name of your solution?
Providing girls and women a path to financial independence.
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
A technology-based program that offers girls access to information and activities to help make informed decisions for a path to financial independence
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
The Covid-19 pandemic and school closures have had a significant impact on the finances, education and wellbeing of adolescent girls across Kenya. In March 2020, and again in March 2021 the Government of Kenya closed schools nationwide in response to the Covid-19 pandemic; as a result, 75% of girls reported that they were unable to continue with their schoolwork, particularly in rural areas. Most had no access to online educational materials. Boarding schools were closed, with girls returning to their villages. During lockdowns, Kenya experienced an increase in reported cases of physical and sexual violence, including domestic violence, against women and girls. After loosening of COVID restrictions, 8% of girls did not return to school.
Besides COVID, there are broader factors impacting vulnerable adolescent girls in Kenya. Without clear paths to post-secondary education or career prospects, upon graduation even educated high school girls must often return to their villages where they continue to face violence, forced marriages, and extreme poverty. Kenyan youth, and girls in particular do not have access to information that can help them plot different paths. Research in 2021 found that hundreds of thousands of newly graduated Kenyan youth aged 20-24 were jobless, mostly due to a lack of experience and skills mismatch. These barriers begin in high school – as the majority of students are unaware of training opportunities and requirements at various levels of post-secondary schools education. These challenges are exacerbated for secondary school girls in Kenya. Gender stereotyping, discrimination and cultural expectations, especially in rural areas, impact girls’ abilities to identify and pursue career choices. A 2015 Kenyan study found that high school girls’ access to information sources, services and activities did not satisfy their career guidance information needs because the resources were few, incomprehensible and lacking in diversity; the study recommended that career information and guidance need to be accessed by girls in secondary schools in order for them to make well informed decisions with respect to further schooling and work.
What is your solution?
One Girl Can staff met with hundreds of girls in our partner high schools across Kenya to discuss their educational and employment needs and how the programming could best address them.
Girls told us that they require more resources and opportunities to learn about all of the career choices available to them, and what the educational/vocational paths to those careers would look like in Kenya.
One Girl Can currently provides leadership workshops and mentorship opportunities to girls at all levels of high school at eleven girls-only schools (9 rural and 2 semi-urban) across Kenya; this project would build on our work and allow us to provide significant career counselling materials and support to these girls as well. One Girl Can will combine this project with our current work with Form 4 students (ages 17-18) using tablets and laptops to provide access to career counselling materials. Each of these off-the-devices can be connected to a rechargeable server called a RACHEL-Plus (Remote Area Community Hotspot for Education and Learning) in case wifi is an issue at the school.
Activities will include:
• Working with a Kenyan guidance counsellor to develop material that outlines career options and the pathways to follow to achieve them, including: diverse career options, including entrepreneurship; information about/from job boards; information from University/vocational school websites; information about loans, subsidies and micro-financing for education and entrepreneurship, and; research on the future of work in Kenya;
• Purchasing hardware and upload career counselling materials on the hardware so the information is easily accessible for the students;
• Undertaking a pilot with 1 school and:
a) distributing the server and tablets to the school;
b) training teachers and students in the use of the equipment;
c) organizing and undertaking an interactive workshop with Form 4 girls;
d) providing students with 2 months to access the career counselling materials on tablets through a library loan system;
e) provide ongoing support for questions during the 2 month period, and;
f) eliciting feedback from the students and teacher to assess success of the pilot;
• Revising materials and process as necessary;
• Purchasing additional Wifi servers and tablets for the remainder of our partner schools;
• Hiring two more career counsellors and launching full roll-out with remaining 10 schools.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
The girls that benefit from One Girl Can programming come from extremely marginalized and poverty stricken backgrounds, mostly in slums and rural
areas. Because they are girls, they are vulnerable to violence, childhood marriage, child labour, and harmful traditional practices. They are often raised by single parents or caregivers that are unemployed or underemployed.
Education is often taken for granted in western societies, but in Kenya girls are denied their basic human right to education, just because they are girls. Again and again, we read the scholarship applications of girls who want to help their families and communities and they see education as the
solution. Without it, they will remain trapped in the cycle of poverty, working long hours doing exhausting physical labour and living day-to-day.
Traditionally, educating boys has been considered to benefit the family more in the long run, and although attitudes are beginning to change, the ability to finance education for girls as well as boys is still difficult. While government support is improving year over year, it is not yet adequate to cover the cost of high school education for most students. This program would be accessible to girls coming from low income to extreme poverty backgrounds who attend our 11 partner schools.
Project Outcomes
• 3300 high school girls in Kenya will have support and access to a wide variety of career counselling materials.
• 3300 high school girls will have increased knowledge to make better informed educational/vocational choices.
• 3300 high school girls in Kenya will experience enhanced self-esteem as a result of having access to educational/vocational choices.
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
One Girl Can is a Canadian and Kenyan registered charitable organization breaking the cycle of poverty and working to achieve gender equality through education, training and mentorship. The organization’s unique model empowers a Kenyan girl from the time she leaves primary school until the day she gains meaningful employment. Very organically, and by starting to understand the needs of our customers – the girls themselves – our holistic, sustainable model was built. It is based on three interconnecting pillars that support gender equality: 1) building and renovating schools for girls; 2) supporting young women through educational scholarships, and; 3) connecting young women and professional Kenyan women through supportive mentorship opportunities. More recently, OGC has also been working in partnership with University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business to develop and deliver an entrepreneurial training program for adolescent and university-aged girls.
Since 2013, One Girl Can has been helping girls and young women overcome barriers so they can be a voice for change and become the leaders, innovators and change makers of the future.
The long-range transformational change is not only felt by the individual but greatly affects her influence on family, community, and the workplace. The societal impact of investing wholly in one individual will systemically and permanently shift negative attitudes towards women, alleviate poverty and contribute directly to economic development and GDP.
One Girl Can:
- built 130 facilities;
- handed out 628 high school scholarships and 373 university scholarships;
- mentors 10,000 girls and young women annually.
Our partner schools and students informed us that there is little to no career counseling in many Kenyan schools and students lack coping skills to deal with the pressures that come with unemployment. Students are unaware of the job options that exist. There is a great emphasis on the collegebound students and little to no information for the many students who do not qualify to join these colleges. Through our partnership with the schools and our students we learned that career counseling must take a new dimension to help students develop skills that will promote job opportunities and ultimately a path to financial independence.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Enable personalized learning and individualized instruction for learners who are most at risk for disengagement and school drop-out
Where our solution team is headquartered or located:
Nairobi, KenyaOur solution's stage of development:
PrototypeHow many people does your solution currently serve?
3,300 Kenyan girls / annually
Why are you applying to Solve?
We are looking for financial support to be able to support the roll out of our in school training.
We are looking for partnerships to support us with our technology needs as it relates to the software and tablet/computers.
We are looking for partnerships to support us with exploring the Future of Work specifically for Kenya.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Technology (e.g. software or hardware, web development/design, data analysis, etc.)
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Ine Van Aken
What makes your solution innovative?
The challenges facing guidance and counseling in Kenya today are similar to those experienced by the United States in the 1920s, which include: role ambiguity, a lack of a practical plan to develop and implement school
counseling programs, a lack of adequate preparation of teachers to carry out guidance and counseling work, and a lack of resources and equipment.
The future of school counseling in Kenya is not all bleak. However, drastic measures need to be undertaken to ensure better provision of counseling services to all the students. Our programming is seen as a more sophisticated
approach to the policies and models of school counseling and this program will create changes that include a redefinition of counselors’ roles, restructuring training programs, implementing a comprehensive school counseling programs, and development of systemic support.
Educating girls is proven to be one of the fastest and most effective paths to ending poverty and gender inequality worldwide. When girls attend school and get a good education and career counseling, they join the workforce, earn their own income, and assume positions of leadership in their communities. But it doesn’t end there, women reinvest 90% of their income back into their families and communities. This is the difference you make when investing in this program.
What are your impact goals for the next year and the next five years, and how will you achieve them?
One Girl Can's north star is to make sure that every One Girl Can graduate earns a meaningful living. We don't consider ourselves successful unless our students are gainfully employed in a career of their choosing and based on their skills.
One Girl Can supports girls and young women in realizing their full potential to earn a meaningful living. One Girl Can's approach is to work with partner schools in Kenya and support a select group of talented girls and young women through a holistic approach which focuses on the continuum of their lives academic, professional and leadership journey. The ultimate outcome of this journey is for them to achieve a meaningful living. This journey includes scholarships, mentorship, coaching, career counselling, and leadership development opportunities. Young women and girls enter this enabling environment and embark upon their journeys when they qualify and receive merit based high-school scholarships. These scholarship awards come with mentorship, coaching and training opportunities that set the girls up for success so that they can complete their high school education. One Girl Can ensures that girls are able to stay in school and focus on their education without the fear or stress of having to drop out due to financial reasons. This sense of stability gives girls confidence to complete their education. All One Girl Can scholarship recipients are required to maintain their academic standings so that they can remain in the program. One Girl Can scholar recipients successfully graduating from high school are offered academic and career counselling so that they can pursue their higher education – university education or vocational training. The counselling ensures that they are job ready and able to complete their internships and employment with a high degree of job satisfaction. Upon graduating from university or professional college, each One Girl Can graduate is expected to pay forward by contributing 5% of their income to the scholarship program. One Girl Can builds these journeys by partnering with local schools in Kenya and providing scholarships to a targeted group of their students. In creating an enabling environment and ensuring program success, One Girl Can engages with Canadian universities and networks to leverage additional resources like specialized entrepreneurial training. Building on the girls’ and young women’s journeys of empowerment, One Girl Can co-creates and organizes networking, leadership and knowledge mobilization opportunities through an alumni network and events like the Annual Best Version of Me conference. One Girl Can graduates actively engage in the alumni network and mentor other One Girl Can participants in their journeys. Young women who once entered the “One Girl Can '' journey as high school students, graduate as successful, confident, resilient, and engaged professionals and leaders who are building their lives and giving back to their communities and families.
How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?
Our intermediate outcome related to this program is enhancing employability skills and career opportunities for One Girl Can graduates.
The indicators we measure are as follows:
•Number of girls and young women receiving full-time / part-time work positions post-graduation
•Percentage of change in girls / young women receiving work positions post-graduation
•Time to find job
•Probability of finding job
•Job retention
•Increased earnings
What is your theory of change?
Describe the core technology that powers your solution.
This solution is using existing technology (off the shelf laptops and tablets) but leveraging it in a way so it becomes accessible for our students in rural Kenya.
Many schools have no computer labs and when they do, they are very limited in resources, often times not having access to wifi or internet.
By utilizing existing technology this project becomes much more accessible but yet opens a world of opportunity for rural schools by offering never seen before access to technology.
The software we will use will also be off-the-shelf software customized for our audience.
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new business model or process that relies on technology to be successful
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
In which countries do you currently operate?
In which countries will you be operating within the next year?
What type of organization is your solution team?
Nonprofit
How many people work on your solution team?
3 part time staff, 8 full time staff, 1 intern, 5 consultants, 11 partner schools approved by the Ministry of Education, 6 Kenyan Board members, 13 Canadian Board members
How long have you been working on your solution?
The founder started working in Kenya in 2008 and the organization was registered as a non profit in 2014.
What is your approach to incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusivity into your work?
One Girl Can is committed to maintaining an environment that supports diversity, equity and inclusion, where everyone is treated with dignity and respect and is free from bullying, harassment and discrimination of any kind, as is defined in One Girl Can’s Bullying, Harassment and Discrimination Policy.
When we talk about diversity, we approach it broadly, in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, geography, socioeconomic, education, background, skill, competency, experience, and culture. In short, diversity of thought, perspective and experience, representing various points of view. All elements of diversity are important to One Girl Can.
One Girl Can recognizes and embraces the broad and considerable benefits that can come from diversity: strong and effective governance, improved decision making, fewer blind spots, broader perspectives, ideas, and a different approach to issues, to name a few. Diversity mitigates against group think and ensures that One Girl Can has the opportunity to benefit from all available talent.
What is your business model?
OUR PURPOSE - One Girl Can harness her power
OUR MISSION - We create opportunities for young women through a holistic model of education, mentorship and training.
The organization is built on a foundation of three pillars that interconnect organically to alleviate gender inequality: We Build. We Educate. We Mentor.
WE EDUCATE - We fund high school and university scholarships for girls and young women. We build and renovate schools to create safe and dynamic spaces to study.
WE MENTOR
From goal setting and leadership training to one-on-one mentorship, we help build confidence and support systems for each student.
WE TRAIN
We connect students with employment through professional and entrepreneurial training, networking and internships.
CYLE OF EMPOWERMENT -THE ONE GIRL CAN SUSTAINABILITY MODEL
Our work with the girls doesn’t end with providing access to education. We are there to support her with coaching and training until she gains a meaningful career.
When our students become graduates they complete the cycle of empowerment. They become mentors and pay forward 5% of their income for four years into a fund that ensures more girls are given the same opportunity.
As our program grows and more girls graduate, the seeds of their achievement will sow benefits for their families and communities. They will use their knowledge, skills, and voice to forge a new path for themselves and the girls of the future. Success is demonstrated when the students begin earning an income and can pay it forward. Our first university graduates are beginning to enter the next chapter of their journey. After graduation they will join our mentor programs.
OUR IMPACT
■ We decrease the gender gap by providing girls and young women with access to educational and employment opportunities.
■ We alleviate generational poverty by making sure women are empowered, able to earn their own income, and support their families so they can lead healthier and more prosperous lives.
■ We deliver results that have a positive community impact allowing the multiplier effect on systemic change to take place.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)What is your plan for becoming financially sustainable?
Funding Sources: One Girl Can has a robust sponsorship model that supports individual women to attend secondary/post-secondary education. Upon completion of this project, One Girl Can will use the same sponsorship model to ensure its sustainability. Similarly, funding will also be sought from family and corporate foundations.
Administration fees: One Girl Can’s administrative costs for are funded by AG, the Canadian corporation owned by One Girl Can’s founder, Lotte Davis.
Solution Team
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Our Organization
One Girl Can Society