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| A graduate from a year ago, Beverly, addresses this year’s class at the closing celebration on August 6 |
In Kenya, high school graduates spend nine months out of school before beginning college. It takes time for the final exams to be graded, and then additional months to hear back from the schools. Historically, this has been a time when young people lose momentum in their education, or worse, make life-altering bad decisions. Ndoto is changing that narrative.
While we have always provided service events and spent time in one-on-one career guidance with our graduates, known as “leavers”, in the past couple years we have begun to build an intensive mentorship program for these students. From February through July, our 26 leavers participated in 12 sessions on career planning, entrepreneurship, mental health, peer pressure, skill development, ministry, financial planning, and more.
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| Haddah (left), from our team, presents a certificate to Lorine (right) |
These 24 hours of learning are supplemented by one-on-one coaching, discipleship opportunities, and volunteer opportunities, and some took part in our basic computer training packages. They had numerous guest speakers from a variety of professions and even took some field trips.
As our graduates collected certificates and gifts at the closing ceremony, and shared cake, we couldn’t help but think about how valuable this training would be for so many others in our community. Now we’re praying about opening it up to the community next year, perhaps even as an income-generating activity. The moment of graduating from high school is a pivotal time in a young person’s life, anywhere in the world, and no amount of investment in a young person in those months could be too much.
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| Pastor Michael addresses the students at the ceremony |
