Daraja Academy

Educating and empowering Kenyan girls from poverty to become community leaders

Location: Nanyuki, Kenya

Sponsor: Phil Jonckheer

Daraja Academy: Grantee in 2012, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2020, and 2021

Daraja Academy in Kenya is a four-year secondary boarding school for girls who have no other way to pay for a high school education. The school opened at the beginning of 2009 with just one freshman class of 26 girls. The school has graduated 115 girls and now serves 120 in four grade levels, and the girls who have attended represent 37 different tribal communities. Accepted students receive a full scholarship through the Daraja Education Fund which includes room and board, tuition, uniforms, and health and hygiene services.

Daraja Academy’s curriculum is designed to prepare students for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education exam: an exam that determines a student’s eligibility for university as well as government tuition grants. In addition, Daraja has developed and teaches a unique 4-year empowerment course called WISH (Women of Integrity, Strength, and Hope). WISH is combined with yearly community service and a post-high school transition course to prepare students to start careers and act as leaders of social change in their villages.

A girl with one extra year of schooling can earn 20% more as an adult, and when a country educates more women, the GDP rises and poverty decreases. Because of their education, Daraja girls will go on to college, careers, and community leadership. They will earn more, have better overall health, and make it a priority to educate their future children.

Daraja is now expanding beyond the students in their high school to engage and encourage younger girls to stay in school and help them become self-assured, independent, community-minded leaders. Their WISH program (Women of Integrity, Strength and Hope) has been successful in breaking the cycle of early marriages, pregnancies and generational poverty.

For more information, see: http://www.daraja-academy.org/

GRANT SUMMARY AND PURPOSE

2012: $25,000 to partially fund a transition/gap year program for the first graduating class. Capacity limitations often require a gap year before university; a time that exposes girls to economic and family pressures to marry early and drop out. The program will keep the girls in school, teaching them useful leadership and self-advocacy skills.

2015: After a hiatus, Daraja returned as a grantee. $25,000 to maintain, improve, and expand the Academy’s transition year program.

2017: Again, a hiatus before a $25,000 grant to undertake research, counseling and teaching of income-earning skills that better address job market demands. New training leads to faster employability and higher wages for students and graduates.

2018: $25,000 to extend Daraja’s impact into the community, including approaching younger girls via the WISH program (designed to empower and encourage self-advocacy). Programs are to be organized, taught, and staffed by students and graduates (graduates include students from past PRW-funded transition programs).

2020: $30,000 to provide Education through distance learning for students, Mental Health care through counseling for families of students, and Financial Sustainability through microloans to families, all of which are in response to the COVID -19 pandemic.

2021: A $30,000 grant supports Year One of a WISH program to reach 380 middle school girls. The project expansion is planned to reach 5,000 Kenyan girls in 30 public schools in 5 years.

IMPACT

Transforming and emotionally affirming young women to be imaginative, courageous, self-sufficient leaders with excellent prospects for higher-income employment.