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The Global Peace Foundation Kenyan chapter has been operating in Kenya for more than a decade now. As much as they rely on their Washington DC head office to sort out their administration financial obligations, for the many programs that they’re involved in they have to look for the funds locally to accomplish them.
Sitting down with Global Peace Kenya’s Resource Mobilization and Partnerships Manager Vincent Ayako at their offices in Nairobi, he showed us innovative ways that they have implemented to gather resources for their projects.
“When you come up with a project and you project the impact it will have, you need to ensure that you push it to the end. There are many times I’ve planned for programs, developed the concept notes and applied for funding from donors. Severally, our requests for funding have been rejected. However, the rejections don’t deter us from reaching our goals. We look for simple, low-cost ways to accomplish our vision and plans,” said Vincent.
For example, Vince talked about their youth entrepreneurship training efforts which involve training the youth in colleges. The campaign is meant to curb youth unemployment by empowering them with the skills and knowledge to start a successful business. They also give them entrepreneurial skills training through value addition and product diversification.
“Every year Kenyan colleges and universities release at least 1,000,000 graduates into the job market with no hope of getting a job. We therefore decided to work with students in TVETS such as Vera Beauty College, Kenya Medical Training Center and others under our Leadership and Entrepreneurship Empowerment Program (LEAPS).
Our model works as follows. We train the youth on the requirements of registering a business and help them reserve a name at the Business Registration Service. Later on we teach them on how to diversify their services. As they graduate we ensure that they join hands together as students and become business partners,” shared Ayako.
The funding bit comes in when they invite officials of the Youth Enterprise Fund and give these students loans to kick their ideas off the ground. With a strong training background in entrepreneurship, product clarity, marketing and customer segmentation, these young people succeed and even employ their peers as the business grows.
At least five businesses have been founded using that model.
Nurturing and maintaining relationships
It was a challenge for Vincent and his team to raise funds for thorough civic education during the run-up to the August 9th elections. They therefore decided to partner with different organizations such as Plan International, Commonwealth Youth Ambassadors Peace Network and others. Each organization contributed some of their resources.
With that, they were able to train students in different schools on peacebuilding and the importance of voting.
Global Peace Network’s long-standing relationship with the media has helped them pass the peace message across to the citizens at no cost at all. One of their president fellows, a college student shot a series of skits with her Oppo cell phone camera. The four skits involved a maximum of three cast members in different scenarios.
Each skit emphasized the importance of voting for the right leaders and the importance of not letting politics cause hatred and conflict in the community regardless of their political affiliation. Vincent and the team will polish the skits by branding them and one of their key media partners will air those skits for free towards the tail end of the electioneering period.
Vincent advises civil society organizations to leverage local resource mobilization and come up with integrated programs such as health, peace, education and others. Accessing funds for such specialized programs with a unique edge becomes easier because of the special focus.
