Raise Funds to Help SAYDS Youth- Education Project

ORGANIZATION MISSION

Systems Acumen for Youth-Led Development Solutions (SAYDS), is a US based 501(c) 3 non-profit organization that was established in 2018 and seeks to make social change initiatives viable, highly successful and deeply transformative for youth that are solving complex social problems. Our goal is to use design and systems thinking  to design strategies that can be used to effectively equip youth with the skills for solving complex social problems. We aim to partner with youth groups and advise them on how to examine the problems they are solving using systems thinking. Rather than using traditional development models of creating solutions for communities, SAYDS engages youth that are tackling these problems and with the learned skills encourage them to approach their own conclusions and solutions. 

SAYDS YOUTH PROJECT 1 - KENYA

The project being undertaken is a collaborative partnership between SAYDS and a youth group in Kenya. The youth group we are working with have identified a problem that many adolescent girls in the rural areas experience. Challenges completing their elementary education due to a lack of economic resources to obtain sanitary towels, which leads to increased absences and poor overall academic performance. The implications are that these girls drop out of school and are forced into early marriages and pregnancies. A key issue that propels the negative feedback are the financial constraints these young girls and their families face. While staying in line with the mission, SAYDS works with the youth to test active learning activities in systems thinking that will develop their understanding of social complex problems and how to tackle them.

The project began in June 2018 with the group traversing select elementary schools in a Western Kenya county (Siaya) where their intentions were to meet and recruit students who would be eligible and willing to join the program. So far the group has met over 38 girls who each provided written accounts of their challenges.  The goal began with focusing on the lack of sanitary towels but from reading the girls’ accounts it is clear that the project will address numerous factors that undermine their overall performance. These children live in extreme poverty and are vulnerable to stigma around menstruation and miss classes every month that result in poor exam performance and often dropping out to be forced into marriage or prostitution to attain financial leverage. The project has been planned in phases where with the collaboration, the youth group will be charged to facilitate research to identify all the factors impacting the girls and form a community among them that will be supervised through regular meetings, in an effort to gather information and develop systems thinking models to arrive at solutions. 

PROJECT PROGRESS SO FAR

Since June, the youth group has managed to achieve significant milestones to the project. They have involved the county administrators (district chiefs), headteachers and parents, together with the girls to collaborate in this program. They are also in the process of getting registered as an official group with the Government of Kenya. They have narrowed the number of participating children to 25 and coordinated a meeting where they were all able to meet one another and to learn the expectations of them in the duration of the project. All the while observing the issues these children face and monitoring their performance in school while developing solutions through systems thinking.

RISK ISSUES FOR THE YOUTH AND GIRLS - FUNDING

Since the youth are the ones on ground helping the children, they need our financial backing to encourage them and maintain their drive as without that the momentum will die. We have a strong team of educated members who spend many hours working and are strongly dedicated to help the youth. If the impetus stops the youth group risks losing interest and consequently the school girls will lose hope. The youth have worked extremely hard to find this group of girls and bring together members of the community to address their problems, unfortunately our organization is facing significant financial constraints as we are still so new without adequate funding.

HOW TO HELP:

With your assistance, SAYDS and the youth group hope to provide resources to improve the children's well-being as they seek holistic solutions to these complex social problems. The funding we receive seeks to provide 6 months of stock: sanitary pads, books, clothing as well as facilitating the logistics of the project such as transportation, counselling, training and meeting costs. 

Your donations will go into the SAYDS PayPal account.

REWARDS:

$25 Receive a public shout out on our website and social media sites 

$35 hand-made earrings and beaded necklaces

$45 hand-made key chains

$50 beaded and leather bracelets

$200+ hand made paintings

All made in Kenya. Reward items can be sent out as gifts to family and friends.