January 16, 2025

Looking to 2025

Our 2025 plans include familiar long-standing programs, changes to a few existing programs, and some breathing room to take a step back and consider where SYEF will focus over the next 3-5 years.

Scholarships have long been the foundation of our work; we started as a secondary school scholarship program in 2010, and that continues to be our primary programmatic initiative. Research has shown again and again that investments in formal education pay off in big ways economically, socially and environmentally. It is an especially valuable investment for girls.

Kenya is amid a multi-year shift in the structure of its primary and secondary schools, transitioning from a two-level model to a primary, junior secondary, and senior secondary model. The government will fund primary and junior secondary, and the costs of senior secondary will be the responsibilities of students and their families. It means the government will fund an additional year of school over what it funded previously, and students and families will bear the costs of three years – rather than four – of secondary school.

This raises some points for discussion for SYEF in 2025. With greater government investment in primary and junior secondary, and economic growth more generally in Kenya that positions more families to afford secondary school, we will be deliberating where our scholarship money can be most useful. The job market is also shifting, with more and more vocational and technical programs feeding jobs in the trades and similar skilled labor. Our discussion will center on whether we should step into the world of scholarships for post-secondary education, while retaining some amount of support for secondary school.  

We will continue to provide life skills training to our scholarship recipients during school breaks, and require participation in community service projects several times annually.

Our DIG Entrepreneurship Program will welcome another round of businesses in mid-2025, but with some changes. This time around we will ask applicants to frame their applications around the issues or challenges in their community they feel most inspired and motivated to address, rather than a specific business idea. This approach will give us some room to facilitate more brainstorming and ideation about the many ways an issue might be addressed, and strengthen the link between new businesses and greater good.

For many years we have worked with ~30 women on sales and marketing of their beadwork. This initiative has always felt a little tangential to our core mission at SYEF, but it is also an opportunity to act with reciprocity to these women who were so gracious in providing access for SYEF’s eventual co-founders in understanding the needs to the community. We will continue this effort of selling beadwork on their behalf and contributing to their well-being.


Our culture at SYEF is inclusive and welcoming of change, and we anticipate our discussions this year to be strategic, dynamic and important to SYEF’s future!

Share this post:
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
WhatsApp

More news & stories

Providing equitable opportunities for Samburu youth to enhance their leadership development and problem-solving skills through educational scholarships and civic involvement opportunities.

© 2023 Samburu Youth Education Fund. All rights reserved.