INUA KIKE ORGANIZATION

Susan Osiche is the founder and Executive Director of Inua Kike. I grew up in the heart of Mathare Slums in a family of seven other siblings, where our parents struggled to put one meal per day on the table.

Due to the poverty and deplorable conditions, I had to drop out of Secondary school and later registered as a private candidate and succesfully attained my certificate which allowed me accessed me the entry to college and get a job using certificate.

Out of this experience and the passion i have for education and women empowerment, the idea to empower women was bred. Inua Kike is a community based organization working with women in the informal settlements in Nairobi. Inua trains and registers young women who dropped out of secondary schoolto sit for their o- level exams as the priovate candidates also Inua Kike empowers young women through mentorship program.

We are sloving the problem of early pregnancies and early marriages. Young women have dropped out of school due to lack of school fees and male child have been preffered in most African communities hence the female child are left out for the male child to be educated due to poverty. We are trying to mitigate for young women to access equal education. Equipping young women with quality education helps improve lifestyle in families. It helps eradicate poverty in families as they help provide in their households.

Our proposal is to be able to raise funds inorder to train and educate young women between the age of 16-35 years to attain their o- level certificates and also to empower them through skills and can be able to sustain themselves.

Our project is geared towards economically, socially and culturally empowering young women in society to realize their rights

Education attainment is still a challenge for many in Kenya, but most especially for girls and wome. In Kenya, only 20% of the female population aged 15+ have completed secondary school. This is indicative of not only high barriers to accessing education but also an extremely high drop-out rate often due to issues such as early childbirth, forced marriages, poverty and an overall patriarchal culture where women are not as valued to recieve education as men.

Moreover the idea of adult reentry in education is not something that is being worked on in Kenya at all. All these dynamics have heavy consequences. It goes without saying that those that drop-out of school miss out on the training, network building and social credibility that education brings and are likely to earn less in their lifetime, reducing them to low-income jobs and living standards. Therefore, Inua Kike works to tackle these underlying causes by addressing access to education from an  adult re-entry perspective. This can help break generational cycles of not only poverty but educational attainment for the children and family members of the women in our programs.

Inua Kike is a swahili word meaning women rising, is a community based organization working with women of ages between 16-35 in the informal settlements in Nairobi who dropped out of secondary school. Inua Kike tutors and registers these young women to sit for their o-level exams as the private candidates. So far we have worked with cohorts of Inua Kike fellows. With that, 14 women have gone through our tutoring program and have gained their KCSE (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education).

Also Inua Kike empowers young women through mentorship programs by empowering them through skills that can be able to sustain them. We equip these young women with quality education which helps improve their lifestyle in families. These skills include financial literacy, entrepreneurship skills and basic women rights, which in return will help empower the young women and get education about their sexual reproductive health rights. So far the mentorship programs we have held, we reached out to more than 200 young women in Mathare slum and Korogocho. For now you may see records of our impact through our website www.inuakike.org and facebook page https://www.facebook.com/InuaK...

One Key learning we have had with Inua Kike is that women are motivated and willing to put in the time and work to reach their goals, especially in education. The cards are heavily stacked against our fellows, from poverty, to perceptions around woman and education, to the political cycles that create violence primarily in the areas that our fellows live. However, they come everyday to study and challenge themselves and reach a goal they have set for themselves. We find this inspiring and though the issues of low education attainment for women has its roots in multiple areas that are entrenched and will need time and collaboration amongst sectors to solve, we are encouraged that Inua Kike as an organization can contribute in our unique way.

We know that our positive results come from that fact that we are one of a few organizations in Kenya that focus on helping low income, adult women to gain higher education credentials build their social and financial independence and pursue their own better future. We as a community based organization understand the circumstances of our women and institutional processes that hinder their growth and are committed to support them reach their goals

Inua Kike is looking to empower young women through education and information there fore we look forward to supporting the community who present these cases of young women through empowerment and return these women will be able to assimilate into the community and be able to return back.

We are committed to solve out these issues in all parts of Kenya and outside Kenya as well. With the prize we are going to win we will be able to empower these women to be able to take care of their families, eliminate poverty and realise their human rights.

I dropped out of secondary school in 2006 when i was in form 4 first term when my Dad lost his job and my mum's business got burnt down this made me not be able to pay for the KCSE examination fee at that moment. Since am from a family of 7 siblings it was not easy for my parents to pay school fee for all of us. I had to start looking for jobs to help out my parents to pay fee for immediate followers. I could not get a job since i did not have a certificate so i though of getting married to try and help out with the issue at home.

I ended up in an abusive marriage that after 2 years i had to walk out with my baby boy who was one week old at that time. I met a friend of mine who introduced me to volunteer at Pawa254 Organization and later was hired to work but i realised i had to go back and register as the private candidate to attain the certificate. This got me to think of starting up Inua Kike project to help those women who are like me.

Am very passionate about the project because my story is what it entails. There are women who dropped out of secondary school and due to their condition they can not afford to pay for the school fee. These relates too well with what happened to me when i had dropped out the reason why am very passionate in working with women in my community. Am also a single mum of 2 boys and its not easy taking care of the kids so i understand fully well the problems the single mothers go through in my community and how Inua Kike can come up to help out.

Inua Kike as a community based Organization is physically located in Mathare area where we are trying to mitigate the problem. This has given us an upper hand where we come face to face with these issues on a daily basis. This has helped us also to come into contact with community leaders and community social / health workers whom we work hand in hand to solve and work on the project well. Currently we have the Executive Director, project officers and Finance officers all of whom have grown in the Mathare area, they have been part of the CBO as its making strides to grow, this has helped them acquire the needed skills required for the project implementation.

We also have an advisory board of 5 women for this year that is offering tremendous support and guidance in order to strengthen and expand our reach and impact. We are also embarking on strategic planning process for the new few years that will include expanding to rural areas as a key objective.

At some point we could not afford to pay teachers and the space where the students use to study. It was not easy since the teachers at some point could stop coming to teach the students and the caretaker of the space could close the doors for our student to study. I was forced to call for a meeting and explained to the tutors that we had no money at the moment and we were not sure when we were going to pay them. Of course i understood them since they had families to feed and they could not have busfare to come on a daily basis to teach and get nothing in return.

I talked to them into perservering with us for the sake of our women whom were approaching to sit for exams. They agreed and had to teach for 9 months without pay and once we got some money we paid them every single cent we had owed this made them trust us even more. With the caretaker of the place i also explained the same and he volunteered to give space until we get funds to pay and we did it and everyone was happy.

Inua Kike is a start up CBO we operate as per donor funding which are followed to the later. For instance our work involves community leaders and community social/ health workers, at some point they felt they needed to be included on monthly payment which was not catered for in the budgets. There was a ago slow as they could not refer the needey cases.

The Executive director then took charge to do a small training explaining to them the rules and regulations and the policies. Together with the benefits the community stands to gain. This was solved amicably we however facilitated for any communication and travel that was involved pertaining to the project.

Our project is very innovative and unique. Most of the young women in Kenya once married off, they are expected to take care of their family and in return the children who are born are given the chance for education. Those who drop out of school due to pregnancy are considered not fit to go back to school.

Based on this our project comes in handy to give a second chance to this target group of women whether they stopped attending classes because of finances, family problems or left because life just happened, we make them understand that they are not alone and not all is lost and it is never too late to go back to school. The program is also unique in away that they study on part time basis which does not interfere with the day to day life of the young women.

In September 2015 at the UN sustainable development summit member states formally adopted the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development in New York. The agenda contains 17 goals SDG 4 which is to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Through quality education to young women it gives them power to access equal opportunities in the job market, this will help improve the livelihood of families in the community. In the long run this is aimed at eradicating poverty in the community improving humanity.

Currently our project is supporting 15 young women through education and 35 young women monthly who undergo mentorship sessions which translates to 420 young women who undergo mentorship sessions in a month translating to 600 per year. In five years our target numbers will be 150 for education program and 3000 for mentorship sessions.

Our main goal is to help attain the global sustainable development goal by 2030 by ensuring we have contributed towards proving inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Our plan is to continue providing private education to the marginalized group of young women in the community through private tutoring.

Some of the challenges we face to fully achieve our goals include limited resources, due to limited financials we do not fully operate to capacity so as to meet the community needs. We are forced to turn away some of the young women due to limited funding. Sometimes we could not hold mentorship sessions as required due to the lack of finances. Also as per African Kenyan cultural practices male child are viewed more important as compared to the female children.

This has led to the female child being neglected and priority given to the male child. Also as per African culture women are viewed as a source of wealth which leads to the young women being married off early before completing their education.

As Inua Kike, we are currently fundraising right now we have a few donors whom have provided funds for our education and mentorship sessions programs however with the current available funding we do not meet the community needs.

We are also planning to have an advocacy team, through the advocates we will be training the community and sensitize the importance for education for all. This will be done inconjuction with the community social workers.

We work with the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) who develop the Kenyan education curriculum just like the normal system, they recommend on the best text books and learning materials to use.

We also partner with other secondary schools where practicals sessions are conducted for our students whom also serve as exchange programs for discussions. KICD also updates us on the current education curriculum/ syllabus and if there are any changes.