Community Outreach & Prevention
Social Rehabilitation
Academic Empowerment
Lifeskills & Leadership Training
Opportunity & Enrichment
Our Work
What differentiates the Simama Project is our “whole-child” model of success. It is not enough to simply pay for a child’s school fees. Many children in Kenya lack access to basic services like a safe place to sleep and a light by which to study. They are often forced into begging on the streets or are simply too sick to even attend school. Our goal is to remove these barriers to not only get kids into school but also allow them to succeed.
Community Outreach & Prevention
Everything we do starts with building human connection through outreach. We work directly with the local community to identify key issues and develop culturally-appropriate solutions. Our goal is to prevent many of the common problems – health issues, drug abuse, mental and physical abuse, and stigmatization – that prevent children from successfully completing their education.
- Social workers are on the streets and talking to the community every day.
- Outreach to build lasting relationships and trust with local kids, families and community members
- Surveys and interviews with kids and community members to better understand needs and establish community buy-in
- Informal learning and teaching sessions with street children and other vulnerable populations in the community.
- Prevention services such as sex and sanitation education to reduce common obstacles to school attendance and success
- Primary school food program so that children have the nutrition to focus on school and not where their next meal might be.
Social Rehabilitation
Sometimes it is not possible to prevent debilitating social problems before they happen. In those cases, our first step is to help rehabilitate those children mentally, physically and emotionally.
- Our Transition Home provides a safe and loving place for children to stay and receive social services as they reintegrate into a positive environment.
- We provide counseling and psycho-social support services for children living on the street or who have been victims of physical or mental abuse.
- Special family counseling services to help repair relationships and family support structures that help children succeed in life.
Academic Empowerment
Our primary goal from the beginning has always been to give our kids the basic human right of education. We provide comprehensive resources to allow our children to succeed in school and ultimately graduate with the confidence and skillset to succeed in life.
- Full scholarships to cover the costs of tuition, uniforms, school supplies, school lunches and boarding costs.
- Our Center of Worth provides one-on-one tutoring, adult mentoring, peer-to-peer mentoring (often from past Simama students), provision of a safe place to study and counseling services to help students overcomes problems that might prevent them from succeeding in school
Life Skills and Leadership Training
Complementing our academic support services, we also provide training in key life skills as well as leadership and self-empowerment to the entire local community.
- Life Skills training includes subjects such as sex education, sanitation and hygiene and general health.
- Community mentoring to teach children the impact of their choices.
- Leadership training and opportunities to help our kids identify issues in their community and feel empowered to become tomorrow’s change makers.
Opportunity & Enrichment
Upon completion of secondary school, we provide additional support and training so that our students are prepared to pursue either higher education or a successful career.
- Tuition support, tutoring and other services to students graduating from secondary school so they are prepared to continue their education or enter the job world.
- Job training to help students acquire employment (coming soon).
- Financial support and business training to start social businesses or find income generation opportunities (coming soon).
- Financial literacy and money management training to help students leverage their hard work and educational success (coming soon).
- Micro savings opportunities to help improve the financial position of students and their families (coming soon).