Claris

Female Youth Grant Winner

I am Claris Nadini, a MasterCard Scholar who is an energetic, self-motivated, young leader in Second Year at Ashesi University, Ghana, studying Mechanical Engineering. At Ashesi University, I am part of the Entertainment Committee under student leadership. I currently serve as the founder and chair of Badili Zone Organization, that is targeting to achieve high quality education in marginalized areas. I was selected into the Millennium Fellowship as a Millennium Fellow for the Class of 2019. It is an opportunity presented by The Millennium Campus Network (MCN) and United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) with the aim of elevating undergraduate students’ leadership. I did my A-levels in Maths, Physics and Further Maths at African Science Academy (ASA), Ghana, which is a new, girls-only Advanced Level school for maths and science. I am passionate about politics and believes that there is a future for African Governance and world leadership in general, hence my motivation to join Kenyan governance in the future. I love dancing, watching comedy, reading, socializing, and coding.

Badili Zone Organization is a registered CBO in Mukuru Kwa Reuben, Embakasi South constituency, Nairobi, Kenya. Badili is a Kiswahili word meaning change. The Badili Zone Organization’s vision and mission is what we call the “Beyond Zero” (It’s beyond zero because zero number of students will not be able to access high-quality education, and we are aiming to eradicate even the idea of being comfortable with not obtaining high-quality education while living in the slum).

Mukuru Kwa Reuben community has more than 18 schools but only two have almost adequately equipped libraries that the rest of the schools do not have access to. That leaves us with the main question, what happens to the rest of the other schools? Where do they access their learning materials? Are they enough? Are they of good quality? This is a big challenge because a lot of students from my community do not have access to adequate learning materials, guidance, and mentorship that will enable them to be educated, goal-driven young leaders.

As Badili Zone, are targeting to provide sustainable solutions that will ensure that students from the slums will have access to adequate learning materials, guidance and mentorship that will enable them to be educated goal-driven young leaders while accessing financial support to further their education. We believe that quality education should not only be a right on governmental books, but also in action and should be easily accessed by everyone regardless.

 

Our Vision

A community that upholds education, empowers and mentors every student in their academic journey with the aim of nurturing a generation of leaders who are goal driven young individuals.

 

Our Mission

To provide sustainable solutions that will improve education standards in the slums by providing adequate learning materials, guidance and mentorship to students while working collaboratively with partners.

 

Goals & Objectives

Our goal is to Build learning centres in the slums.
Mentor and nurture the next generation through coaching them into well-equipped young leaders.

Our Core Values

Self-Motivation.
Empowerment.
Honesty.
Caring Community.
Commitment.
Togetherness.

 

Badili Zone Organization has 5 major pillars that all contribute to the achievement of the main goal;

a} Reading Spots

We have a reading spot for a safe, peaceful and comfortable learning environment, where the students will access required learning materials

  1. b) Financial Support

We will be financially supporting needy but bright students throughout their high school life under a unique program that seeks to partner with different stakeholders such as Jomo Kenyatta Foundation (J.K.F).

  1. c) Mentorship

We work closely with volunteers from various Universities who volunteer during mentorship sessions, which we currently do three times a month in different schools.

  1. d) Guiding and Counselling

Some of our beneficiaries have gone through traumatic situations, therefore, we ensure mental health and peace of mind for efficiency in their general performance.

  1. e) Sanitary Towels

Our library spots will be distribution spots for the sanitary towels for the girls from our target area.

The organization is fully run by volunteers. Our main objective is focused in transforming communities in the slums through fostering education. We believe through acquired knowledge individuals can make informed decisions that can ameliorate their lives.

Working with partners and the community of Mukuru we were able to secure a structure, equip it and launch a community library on the 10th August 2019. The library is currently actively being used by the community. Some of our supporters/partners include Reading Spots(our major supporter), Jomo Kenyatta Foundation, Red Cross-University of Nairobi, HOPE Worldwide Kenya, Muungano wa Wanavijiji, Isuzu East Africa, Akili Dada, Ruben FM, General Electric, and the local community members and leaders such as the Education Officer and the Chief to mention but a few.

The idea of having a community library that can be used by every student/teacher is unique because it is not only able to reach a larger population of students, but also ensures that no one is marginalized with basis of their background when it comes to accessibility of high quality education.

We have two major sustainability plans. We buy branded t-shirts with our logos at Ksh 500 (approximately $5) and sell each at Ksh 1000 (approximately $10) and the money goes directly to ensuring that we have been able to incur any costs that comes with the management of the community library. The students who use the library also have a weekly registration fee of Ksh 30 (approximately $0.3) which goes directly to maintaining the library and all that it contains.

On impact measurement, for the library, we have a logbook that contain statistics on the users’ names, contact, age, time spent, school attended, as well as check the performance of our beneficiaries, both students and schools. For the mentorship we look at student social performance through decisions made and their interaction with society. Guidance and counselling and provision of sanitary towels are supplements of maximum participation of students in schools, to be measured by analysing student attendance records kept by schools. In general, we also take note of people’s feedback about what we are doing and do interviews and also share questionnaires to our direct and indirect beneficiaries to understand their views. Through these vigorous methods, we will be able to collect the data and make correctly informed analysis on how much impact we are making in the community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My email address; oyungaclaris@gmail.com

Badili Zone email address; info@badilizone.org