Building global skills in the villages

In 2023 we started off the Educate A Game Changer project with the aim of supporting girls and young women in rural Nakuru County, Kenya to pursue and complete their education. We targeted girls in primary and high school whose basic needs in school were leading to absenteeism and school drop outs. These girls were missing school days due to lack of basic but crucial items like uniforms, stationeries and most importantly sanitary towels. The project therefore began with distribution of these important items in 3 schools in Solai area. 2 primary and Junior secondary and 1 high school. Between 2023 and 2025, we have distributed the items mostly sanitary towels and reached 600 girls in the 3 schools. Additionally, the project has carried out 5 menstrual awareness camps bringing both the school girls and others including young women in the community reaching an additional 400.

In 2025, the community raised a need for the project to support out of school youth who were stuck at home after completing their high school education. Some even have tertiary training but are unemployed due to lack of job ready and mostly digital skills.

This request pushed the project to seek funding from our networks to implement the idea. Fortunately, a local CBO had implemented an ICT hub with the help of a volunteer program by an organization called Corps Africa. The hub remained under utilized as most families could not raise the cost of training.

The CBO requested for a partnership to raise sponsorship for the youth who found the cost prohibitive. A past supporter of our project responded to the proposal to support 50 youth.

In January, 25 began their training and the other 25 will begin in April. In addition to the IT skills training, we are implementing a career mentorship program to prepare the youth in the communities with future of work information. Our first camp was in January and the next will be in April.

Because most of these communities have little or no contact with advanced technologies, our skills training support has started with basic IT literacy classes for youth (though we give emphasis to young women, we also include young men).

These young people have high school education and some tertiary but have never used a computer and any systems run to perform tasks using a computer. The highest form of technology that they have interacted with are smartphones which they basically use for communication and basic internet access especially social media interactions.

This points to how much advanced technology will leave behind a big portion of populations in developing and least developed countries as it moves at lightning speed. As AI is taking over most tasks in workplaces, more than half of the potential workers in these regions is yet to get in contact with basic IT functions. This is putting into consideration that 55% of the population in Africa in rural and in Kenya, 70% reside in rural areas.

In the coming months, our mission is to introduce AI and advanced IT skills to the learners and encourage young people in the community and surrounding areas to take up the skills. The future of work will not wait neither will opportunities consider that anyone lived in marginalization. A job seeker will either have the requisite skills or ready to miss opportunities. Our efforts are to change the chances of at least 10s or hundreds of the youth in these hidden communities and walk with them towards the future with a little readiness to compete with others across the world.

We all have an opportunity to change the life of at least one person and contribute to changing the lives of many through small acts of community solidarity.