GUiDE Project

The initial target beneficiaries are the secondary youth aged 12 to 24 years. The majority of Youth, particularly in rural and under-resourced schools have inadequate or completely lack access to opportunities, owing to a number of factors, including but not limited to lack of and inadequate exposure, inadequate personal development, inadequate information on careers, inadequate guidance on innovation, inadequate guidance on the development of talents, and inadequate peer networking opportunities. This innovation seeks to bridge the missing gap that exists by connecting secondary school youth with strategic mentors using the school as a Resource Center. In this, the youth will come out as empowered citizens ready to improve their lives and that of their communities
The learners will be assigned mentors from among their peer alumni, teachers, and other resource persons in the community who will work closely with each as a support network to provide structured mentorship. Besides mentorship on personal development, careers, disruptive innovation, creativity, business skills, and social project designs, unique talents, as well as learners facing challenges in determining their passion and innate talents or in cross paths in academics, are identified and nurtured throughout the secondary school life. Experienced mentors will be in charge of school resource centers in partner schools. In the partner schools, GUiDE Clubs are established and integrated into the schools' programs and will be used for the projects' activities and other support programs. The mentors will also work to identify young learners facing difficulty in their education journey.

During the mentorship period, the young people are required to be well self-aware, well-informed, exposed, innovative, creative, and able to develop businesses and unique social  projects that are relevant and can help solve community problems. Thye should also be able to appreciate their unique place in making their communities better. The social and business projects that are deemed unique and sustainable are further mentored to the next level and connect to potential sponsors and markets in the case of business projects. However, the main objective is to help identify passion, creativity, and commitment to becoming a social entrepreneur and GUiDE Mentors.  The model works from form one up to form four levels. After a long year of intensive and rigorous mentorship, the mentees are trained to be peer mentors. After high school,  young promising, and well-performing alumni as well those in colleges and universities qualify to be recruited trained and become alumni mentors at the partner schools.

GUiDE Project began as an individual effort to guide secondary school kids and those immediately out of secondary school to appraise their career paths and make informed choices in and after school. In my teaching career in various schools and diverse environments, I met with youth from all social and economic backgrounds and listened to their queries, stories, aspirations, and challenges. Having been born in a humble background in rural Kenya, I could easily identify with their successes and challenges. Success is their eagerness to achieve their full potential in school and life. One of the outstanding challenges that the youth go through in the period between school and out of school is inadequate and more often lack of structured engagement and programs to help them link school life and life after school. i engaged parents, teachers, community opinion leaders, and experts in education and I discovered that, the youth in school, besides getting “good academic grades” desire to have structured full-time mentorship on the way out of pressing challenges and way forward as far their endeavors after school is concerned. I also found that more often the rigors of academics prevent the youth from appreciating their unique talents, and innovative abilities and engaging in other community programs that help them grow holistically. After observations, discussions, research, inquiries, and helping individual learners on the school and community level, the idea to establish a formal program was born. GUiDE Project strives to complement existing education programs offered by the government and other organizations.

The youth in secondary school have been found to become very excited, contented, and motivated and their academics improved in school when what they learn in class is linked to the real world. The learners also feel empowered when they are guided to innovate and develop projects that solve their problems and those of the community they come from. More importantly, the learners, after school desire to be informed to choose well-informed careers and occupations that interest them and they have the potentials to pursue. The learners will also be excited to learn about other possibilities of advancement after school including in the business and entrepreneurial world. towards this end, the youth, from an early age, need to be mentored on developing solutions to community problems.

Motivation, the desire to achieve a goal or a certain performance level, and one of the forces that lead to performance can be developed and must be accompanied by ability—or having the skills and knowledge required to perform such a task. Environmental factors such as having the resources, information, and support one needs to perform well are critical to motivating any person to achieve. For instance, a learner in high school may be a high performer in academics but not well-motivated to utilize other creative talents for a better life outcome. In managing attitudes and performance of learners both in school and after school, the expectancy theory of motivation postulates that high levels of effort will lead to outcomes of interest, such as academic performance or success in life. For example, a belief that the efforts a learner put forth in a class are related to performing well in that class will push the learner to put more effort. A belief in possibilities in school and after school, learners' potential, numerous opportunities, and a better living after school is likely to push learners to put forth effort in preparing for the life they want for themselves and their communities. Mentorship avails such resources and provides motivation.

The expectancy theory also says that a person’s performance is related to subsequent outcomes, such as rewards. If the learners could relate what they do in school to what is in the real world, then they are likely to do better in their school work and also develop the potential for future endeavors. If they are mentored on what is expected after school(the reward), they will be motivated and better equipped to handle life after school and make a valuable contribution to society. In the same vein, learners are also concerned about the value of the rewards awaiting them as a result of performance. If these outcomes are desirable to them, then their expectancy and instrumentality is high, and are more likely to put forth effort in school and life. Our program provides just that, a belief in valuable outcomes in and after school.  Finally, learners are also concerned about the value of the rewards awaiting them as a result of performance. For example, do a learner value getting a better job, or gaining approval from the teacher, community, friends, or parents? If these outcomes are desirable to them, then their expectancy and instrumentality are high and are more likely to put forth effort in school and life. We create this desire through the intervention.

Our solution is unique in that, instead of providing the basic and essential services such as shelter, food, and medical help it provides high-order needs of achievement to both the learners and mentors. It has been found that high-order needs are a great source of motivation not only to achieve but to change the world for the better, Through this, people are also empowered to change themselves and their communities using their abilities, potential, and opportunities as opposed to focusing on their inabilities and liabilities like many other service organizations. On the other hand, Maslow's hierarchy of needs postulates the innate need of all of us to feel needed, useful, and part of a community. This is true regardless of the economic situation and residential status. It applies to anyone who wants an outlet to give back and share what they know. GUiDE Project seeks to utilize this human innate need to connect the learners with mentors from their communities.

We appreciate the fact that good intentions may not always lead to good outcomes. For this reason, our project strives for evidence of how our solution creates the most impactful outcomes for the target population. One of our pillars and guiding principles is an evaluation of the evidence of impact as an ongoing exercise that enable us to continually reflect, refine and make improvements to the program.

We appreciate the inadequacy of empirical data, from high-volume research, as evidence of impact at our pilot stage of development, something we intend to improve and record as we vigorously scale our solution. However, we are using observations, discussions, and stakeholder engagement to appraise the impact of the project. Taking into consideration the social revolution, changing nature of education, the advancement in technology, and more importantly, the disruptive nature of the career and work environment, we believe GUiDE Project will help create sustainable communities through the creation of better life outcomes for the youth. The program started out as an individual effort to guide students to make informed choices in careers and occupations. The Kenya education system doesn’t have a structured career guidance program. In the cause of these engagements, it was discovered that apart from the traditional careers learners choose, they also require mentorship about unlimited possibilities in the world, and development of their unlimited potential to match unlimited opportunities in school after school. That modest reengagement produced impressive results. On record, many students who otherwise did not have an idea of what career they intended to pursue managed to join college and university. Very valuable evidence. Many gain the motivation and the interest in their academics too. In the cause of these, it was also found that students openly declared their talents, creativity, and innovative abilities. It was from this engagement that GUiDE Project was born with three main objectives. Firstly to create a structured way of mentoring the learners, secondly to utilize the availability of resource persons in the community, and thirdly to scale the help needed by learners in schools to a bigger population of youth. GUiDE Project aims to partner with youth, schools, and governments to design and deliver an education solution that equips young people in high school with the skills to attain further education, overcome gender inequities, start businesses, get jobs, design innovative projects, improve their livelihoods and drive development in their communities. GUiDE solution will utilize available resource persons to mentor the young learners. The evidential integration into the theory of change by our solutions is an appreciation of

Learners who are able to link their academics to real-world solutions

Learners who are able to develop their creative and innovative skills early in life

Learners who are developing innovative projects that solve their community problems

Learners who are able to appreciate the changing world of disruptive careers and develop an interest in emerging fields

Learners who are able to develop entrepreneurial interests and abilities, create business solutions that they can carry on even after school

The main indicators and data evidence that were are currently using to track and measure our solution’s impact includes but not limited to

Output

• Mentors sign-ups in the partner schools
• At least 100 school partnership signups in the first 2 year
• The establishment of  functional guide clubs
• Establishment of innovative projects with schools
• Establishment of an online mentorship platform in the next 2 years
• 1000 school partnerships in the next 5 years

Outcomes

• Learners who are able to link their academics to real-world solutions

• Learners who are able to develop their creative and innovative skills early  in life

• Learners who are developing innovative projects that solve their community problems

• Learners who are able to appreciate the changing world of disruptive careers and develop an interest in emerging fields

• Learners who are able to develop entrepreneurial interests and abilities, create business solutions that they can carry on even after school

GUiDE Is an innovative  social enterprise forging a new and complementary education pathway for learners in secondary school by connecting them with mentors from their communities to walk them on the journey of school and beyond

Our research question is: how can we refine this to have the most impact at the least cost to the largest population of secondary school youth? As one of the deliverables potential, we are currently using an onsite mentorship solution to reach out to secondary school learners. We have deployed qualitative data to measure evidence of the solution impact. It is our belief that integrating stronger evidence from quantitative research data would accelerate the improvement and future designs of our project. This is where leap fellows will come in, to help us design better tools and strategies to use in measuring the project impact. Secondly, we would like to scale the solution to be both an onsite virtual and online pedagogy. The leap fellow would help in designing, by use of world best practices and emerging technology a better world-class both online, virtual, and onsite solution. Thirdly, the aim of this project is to bring out the best in the secondary school youth both in school and out of school. We believe that reaching out to them early in school will have a great impact. However, tracking them, measuring the impact when scaled up, and determining if indeed this solution is the cause of the outcomes and no other extraneous interventions stronger strategy, better tools, experience from world practices, tailor-made designs, a tangible roadmap, and strategic analysis, we need the expertise, the talent and the global network of the leap fellows. 

Finally, the outcome of this project will help improve employment ability, business, and entrepreneurial abilities, income, innovations, and the establishment of social projects to help their communities and the youth in a larger and more efficient, and effective manner. Hosting a LEAP project will help this innovative solution to acquire the resources, define a strategic roadmap, refine the pedagogy, and scale the idea to the undersrved and deserving  youth in Kenya.