Nairobi Girls Get A Feel Of Finance….Business!

AUGUST HOLIDAY 19^th – 21^st REPORT

THEME: ENTREPRENEURSHIP

We recorded an average attendance of 73 girls. The participants are a holiday group largely from the community around Nairobi County and upcountry, aged between 10 and 19 years, with majority being 14 years of age.

Schools in Attendance

1. Ngei Primary14 girls
2. Uhuru Gardens Primary 9 girls
3. St. Michaels Primary 1 girl
4. Malezi Primary 4 girls
5. Malezi High  2 girls
6. Karen ‘C’ Secondary 3 girls
7. Langata Barracks High 2 girls
8. Langata Barracks Primary 1 girl
9. Nairobi Day Secondary  2 girls
10. Shunem Girls 2 girls
11. Mwaani  Girls 1 girl
12. Kinyw Girls 1 girl
13. Olympic Primary 17 girls
14. St. Catherine’s Primary 5 girls
15. Red Rose Academy 1 girl
16. Soweto Academy 1 girl
17.  Langata West Primary 3 girls
18. Free Methodist School 1 girls
19. St. .Marys Primary 1 girl
20. St. Michaels High 2 girls
21. St. Andrews 1 girl

Day 1 19^th August Tuesday

Covenor/Trainer: Ja Young Margaret

Lifeskill Games: Coach Mary Florence Akinyi and Rehema Akinyi

Attending: 83 Girls

The theme of the day was Being Money Savvy Jayoung Naphtalie Margaret. 

The girls were taught on all the essentials of money ;

• What is money: Girls were able to discuss in groups what they each think money is , why we use it, where we get it from. Answers ranged from ..’its what we use to get needs and wants, …what you take with you to the shop, market or super market…its coins and shillings…..its valuable and has value….its means of exchange in form of coins and bank notes.’’ Some appeared blank having never thought of the question before. With regards to why they answered..,…’use to buy what we need, …use to save….use to start business.’ When presenting on where do we get it from they said …..’ banks,…..savings….parents give….pick ‘’okota’’ ….business…De La Rue’.
• Evolution of money. Under this sub topic girls were able to see and discuss different forms of money as used in the olden days up to today. They discussed and shared what they think currency is some saying its like a form of money as everyone else agreed that it must be an acceptable means. We also got to see some samples of money in different forms as well as discuss the value of it inclusive of learning to know how to , what to change and which currency is used where.
• Papers for Life. This is a session done in goal and was important to teach the girls on what this papers/documents are for the simple reasons that access to lots of facilities in life including money in most instance would require this documents. Birth certificates, IDs, Passports, academic certificates, Marriage Certificates, land and property titles, business permits, health certificates, death certificates, baptism and the like. The girls were able to identify at least each one of the mentioned and see how they can use it in relation to money and other things.
• Skills v Qualities. This session was closely followed after papers for life where the girls were required to differentiate between the two as well as talents vs skills. This is an important session as they girls get to discover themselves have a basic or rough career guide outlook by weighing their abilities as well as seeing income opportunities. Eg one who is attentive to details, artistic and loves beauty would easily see and point out a skill related, develop it and market it and create a business from it therefore, income!
  
• Wants & Needs, Spending Decisions & Budgeting. This sessions were done closely together. Girls identifying and distinguishing wants from needs, doing a spending decision exercise where each group must have a budget with everything they want minus an income bit. Then each group is either allocated exact money , less or more their list. They need to use the wants and needs lesson and decide whats worth the spending.
• Saving Game and Saving. After lunch the girls had a saving game from which they drew broad lessons , that would be use through out the week including business , marketing , branding. They also each shared what they know about saving drawing lessons from the game and previous learnt sessions in the day.
• Each group had to prepare a song with the words ‘spend less than you earn and save something everyday or everyweek ‘ to present at the end of workshop. The composition is their own, the tune could be own composition or a tune they like, they could rap or anything as long as its creative.
• End of Day 1!

Day 2 August 20^th  Wednesday

Covenor/Trainer: Dr. Elizabeth Odera

Lifeskill Games: Coach Mary Florence Akinyi and Rehema Akinyi

Attending: 75 Girls in Attendance.
Theme Of The Day: Understanding What A Business Is

We started the day with the girls leading their ice breaker and recap of previous day sessions.

·      What’s a Business. The girls were each given a group to work with and supplied with business demonstration papers. 8 different business in picture and each of the groups needed to share what they see and make comments. Then each picked a business of choice to discuss on with guide questions on what they think the business is, why they think it was developed, what service or product is being provided, advantages to the customer, disadvantages, what could be improved. Each group had an extensive discussion and later each presented their findings.

·      Money, Business, Market game. Coach Mary Florence organized for two games, a number tag game & ‘rounders’. For the mid morning before lunch. We had 4 big groups and four ‘rounder’ fields. Each team had to play by the rules of the game paying attention to details as they relate it to everything we are learning under Girls and Finance. The main concepts and lessons were, learning to count and keep business records, learn to save, learn customer relationship, understand our products, learn value of time and speed in relation to the business products, understand risks, know what are smart risks and what are not, doing prior research on a business before launching on it, understanding the rules of the business, knowing when you need to change the business tactics to keep playing, know the health hazards depending on business.

·      Taking advantage of new opportunities , women in business. The afternoon was spent by girls looking into examples of women in business. They read Esther Pasaris Story and analyzed it by looking at the idea, its uniqueness, her income, and service to the community. We ended the day with each girl going home to think of an idea that they have.

Day 3, 21^st August Thursday

Covenor/Trainer: Dr. Elizabeth Odera

Lifeskill Games: Coach Mary Florence Akinyi and Rehema Akinyi

Attending: 75 Girls in Attendance.

Theme Of The Day: I Have An Idea and SWOT Analysis

Day three started with thorough cleaning of class and environment, with Florence Akinyi and Goal Champions.

• I have an Idea . Each girl had to report their idea to the group and decide which was the best to take.
• SWOT Analysis. Having arrived at the final idea , each group needed to analyze their business idea against its own Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats 
• CAMERA SHOTS were taken by Dr. Liz and Florence of each group and their ideas. THE VIDEOS WILL BE POSTED IN THE UPCOMING PLATFORM FOR GIRL POWER, LATER THIS YEAR.

NAIROBI REPORT FOR THE MONTH OF JULY 2014

GIRL POWER CLUBS AFRICA

JULY REPORT FROM NAIROBI COUNTY

The 2nd term of the school calender is often the longest and the busiest with most activities. July the 3rd month of this term had 5 weeks and activities that had been included in this month have been:

1. Music festival competitions for those preceeding to higher levels. Schools that have been active in this are Olympic High School, Olympic primary and Huruma Girls whose members are currently part of the Music competition in Mombasa for a week. They left for the destination on the 9th of August and have in practice for it.

2. Footall competitions. Schools that participated in this were Nazarene Primary, St. Catherine and Olympic High school who were away for two weeks and competed in Kajiado county.

3. School trips. Most academic school trips take place in 2nd term and especially July for upper primary classes and high school. This includes student seminars such as Nairobi Day School has been involved in.

4. Preparation for exams, evening tution , Inter-school , school and MOCK exams from the 4th to the 5th week of the month with some finishing on the 1st week of August as they close.

This means that most extra-curricular activities including clubs can take place more smoothly in the first 3 weeks. Depending on the time allocated per Girl Power club each school would be expected to have 1 to 2 session per week and therefore in July we expect to record 4 sessions at most per school with those who have sessions on Saturday being much better placed to record more sessions at end of July since they would have less interferance with other weekly school programmes.

The month of July saw the return of one of our old clubs with a great bang! Karen C Secondary School now turning to an all girls boarding school has rejoined us with over 80 girls meeting for at least 3 hours every Saturday with project assistant Jayoung and have so far recorded an average of atleast 60 girls per session and have managed about 19 sessions from both Be Yourself (Module 1) and Be Healthy (Module 2) with one session on HIV/AIDS to go which will be their opener for the next term. Presently, they have no certain patron but their principal has promised to get them one. Most of their sessions are up on salesforce.

Visits to this school were done on the 10th, 12th, 19th, 26th and the 2nd of July. All Saturdays apart from the introduction day 10th July which was a Thursday. Sessions covered here included: Introduction to Girl Power, Introduction to Goal, Ice Breakers , Secret Whispers and Communication Skills- Non -Verbal Communication, Girls and boys, Gender and Work, People and Things, Leadership, Conflict Ladder, Peer Pressue, Saying No and meaning it, Whom am I what Do I want to Do, Role Models and Mentorship. In Be Healthy we had Body Image, Hygiene, Menstruation, Contraception, Bodies, Emotions and Sexuality, Whats your position and we had lots of  questions on Whom am i what do i want to do, Peer Pressure, Saying No, Mentorship, Menstruation, contraception , Relationships , Bodies , Emotions and Sexuality. A few on academic study tips. In general apart from Nazarene, Olympic Primary , Huruma Girls its the most interactive group and most interactive among the high schools.

At Olympic Primary school they recorded 5 reported sessions this term, 4 up on Salesforce. They have their meetings on Fridays from 3:30 pm. The girls meet alone whenever possible and are very impressive considering their ages. They take charge for themselves and lead their own sessions. Their club activities have been interfered with by the numerous school extra curricular activities this being the music festival term and school trips. Visits were on the 22nd, 30th and 1st August. Thier sessions included values and discipline, conflict , living with HIV and Aids, peer pressure and hygiene.

At Nazarene Primary School ,  their patron is now taking charge of their sessions following the June training on Goal that we had. They meet on Wednesdays. For July they have reported 1 meeting session so far, a day out on sports and the rest spent the rest of the weeks on end of term exams. They had a visit on the 23^rd of July by Women Win’s Yvone Henry and had a great interaction session with her sharing the things they have learnt along the way through Goal.  Visits here were done on 7th, 16th, 23rd of July with our intended visit of 1st August to see progress cancelled as inter-school exams had already began a week earlier. Mr. Charles did mention his had to repeat sessions for the sake of new girls and follow as was trained at the workshop  in June and have so far done Non- verbal communication, communication skills and will go back and forth. They promised to make this available and communicate once all major school activities are over. However they have been actieve in inter school competitions and trainings for most wednesdays when they would have been in sessions. Their presentation and interaction with Women Win's Yvonne Henry on the 23rd was the most impressive of the three schools visited by her on that day.

Huruma girls meet on Thursdays 4-5. They  mainly had discussions on rights this month, some on music festival practice , and end term exams. The girls sometimes meet alone and other times their patron comes around to help them. They have been having general recording of sessions challenge making it abit difficult to track individual session records. Their recorded sessions will be sent back to them for clarrification. One of the girl leaders responsible for sessions recording whom we contacted mentioned she will avail herself to explain the sessions once they are back from the Mombasa Music Festival competitions. The club has been having two guide books; Goal and The World Starts With Me. They have been mixing up this two which some of the sessions in The World Starts With Me will be different from Goal and in most cases might not be possible to put it on sales force. In July we made 1 visit to see the progress and collect sessions on the 31st July.

Holy Unity High School , Holy Unity Primary and St. Catherine.

The high school meet on Fridays and the primary Monday and Wednesdays. St. Catherine meet on Wednesdays. The first two have had general meeting and running of sessions challenges them having had relied on Goal Champion Caroline who is now forced to be absent attending to enforceable home accident forced to be in hospital more than a month,   despite having a few among them. St. Catherine is often also met by Caroline but their patron does take charge. Reports received from this schools in the past month apart from St. Catherine are unclear and cannot be entered on Salesforce until we have them all clarified. St. Catherine is yet to send in theirs. Visits to this schools were done on the 21st and 23rd July.

Olympic High School, Starays Secondary, The Malezis and Nairobi Day Secondary have not returned sessions for July. Olympic high school group have been away on soccer competitions for most July in Kajiado County and only returned in time for exams. Nairobi day and Starays promised to send theirs in after their exams. Visits to Olympic High were on 16th, 22nd and 30th. To Starays 7th ans 21st with intended visit on 1st August cancelled as exams were already in progress a week before and the teacher mentioned to contact us once free. Meet some of the girls responsible who mentioned they have not done much on their own apart from abit of sports. Nairobi day 7th, 21st and 1st August. Here their session was given to a student who was away on a seminar.

CHALLENGES IN JULY AND THE TERM IN GENERAL.

•       There has been a noted inconsistence in the attendance of some beneficiaries from the session returned in nairobi.

•       Irregular reports. There is a problem in the schools dealing with new participants as they are both entered into same session forms with the regulars. This causes entry and tracking problems of  beneficiaries against their session attendance which means until the report is clarified  entries cannot be made so as to avoid confusion.

•       From the above reports there is a striking difference between between schools that meet on their own days and times and those that have same days and more often than not same times for session. It means that one is going to have to lose out is they totally depend on having a project assistant in sight. There has also been the challenge of proximity between the schools for days we have more than one school within close hours and often inflexibility of some of the school programmes.