SEAM (Self Education And Mentorship) Program

            The SEAM team would like to take this opportunity to thank all our donors and those who continue to take an interest in what we do, and hope to accomplish. As we enter the second quarter of the year, our main programs continue to flourish; these include our outpost program, which mentors the children as they implement their gardening skills at home, by developing their own kitchen gardens, the arts and craft program which tries to teach the children fine art skills, as they tell us stories about their communities thought their art, and produce crafted products that they can sell and make money from. Finally we are also happy with our financial literacy program, which we are slowly developing into a structured course that can eventually be opened to a broader range of participants from the city of Kisumu. Our Saturday feeding program has also been doing well thanks to donations from our repeat donors.

            One of the challenges we are facing at SEAM however, is the lower turn out of boys into the program. This seems to be a consistent problem throughout the city, with other programs and schools raising concerns over this common trend. We are currently working on experimenting with a variety of tailor made programs for boys, to see if we can successfully tackle this concern. Based on some of our reading, boys need programs that take into consideration their need for physical movement, competition and sensory stimulation when learning. Our goal and plan is to start with a simple experiment to find out how we can incorporate these elements into the learning experience for the boys, not just so that we can improve the turn out of boys within our own program, but to help address this issue in the wider community.