By Pauline Wanja, CEO, Future First Kenya
This guest blog by Pauline wraps up the week-long series on alumni engagement in Kenya in times of COVID. Reflecting on her journey with FFK, Pauline charts out the future of the organisation and the Association of Alumni Communities as a vehicle to drive change in the country’s education system.
When I joined Future First Kenya, my job description seemed straight forward: to pilot an alumni model in Kenyan schools, which was inspired by the success of a similar alumni engagement model in the UK. It was supported by a national survey on the propensity of adult Kenyans to give back to their old schools. 78% said they would give back to their former schools if asked, but only one 1% had done so. That and other data we have collected demonstrated a ripe environment for mass alumni activities in Kenya.
My first tasks as the head of Future First Kenya were very exciting and seemingly easy. I accompanied my colleagues in the UK as they facilitated alumni-centred career events in various schools. The students were engaged, keen and excited. Then it was my turn to run the first event in Nairobi, for which we chose Dandora Secondary. The school didn’t have a formal alumni network, and so I reached out to several alumni through their Facebook page, inviting them to their alma mater. Seven alumni showed up. The event ended up leaving a lasting impression on me and continued to inspire our work of championing alumni participation in Kenyan schools.
Eight years into my role, my job description does not seem as easy as it read in 2012. It is much more than organising occasional alumni-centred mentorship activities. It means engaging with a complex education system and being part of solving these challenges as part of a global movement.
Showing Alumni Impact amidst a Pandemic
We kicked off 2020 on a high note, confident with the progress and impact we have made.
Our 2019 Impact report Transforming Public Education in Kenya through Alumni Engagement showed how far we came since 2012, when we started with 15 schools in Nairobi and its outskirts. Over the years, Future First Kenya has supported alumni to serve in school boards, run campaigns to get public schools titled, and through alumni giving invested in school infrastructure.
Our alumni networks supported 100,000 students through alumni centred mentorship and career support sessions. As we closed the year, alumni giving in at least 60 of the schools we engaged totalled to 2.6 million US dollars.
To draw inspiration and keep us grounded for the work ahead, my team and I went back to Dandora Secondary. Things were different. The school has a functional alumni network, led predominantly by alumni we engaged at the Inaugural event. The students were as keen and engaged as always. The teachers hosted the alumni for a conversation on how best to support current student and the school administration.
We dreamed big, to ensure at least 10% of schools in Kenya got support from their alumni.
Come March and in light of COVID 19, the government closed all learning institutions. Our work had to take a new turn – with more Kenyans working from home, we were able to mobilize for Kenyans to reconnect with their alumni networks. Unfortunately, as schools remain closed, alumni activities in schools are non-existent. The government also declared 2020 a lost academic year and as a result, an estimated 15 million learners will repeat classes when schools reopen in January.
In the midst of this crisis, the stories shared over the past four days and many others not covered, show that this time of crisis is the right time to mobilize our entire nation to rally behind the education system and for alumni to be involved.
So why Alumni Associations and not Direct Alumni Engagement?
Since the advent of formal education in Kenya, numerous generations have graduated to form the backbone of the nation’s workforce and trailblaze in sectors of economics, scientific research, sport, and art. With a total of 38,194 primary and high schools in Kenya and generations of graduates from these institutions across all walks of life, alumni are a pool of human and financial resource, which schools are not tapping into.
Over the past eight years we have been supporting individual alumni networks. Moving forward we are incubating the Association of Alumni Communities in Kenya, a consortium of alumni associations across primary and secondary schools. It will exist to strengthen education in the country through the direct and indirect involvement of alumni in their respective alma maters.
The Association was launched by the Education Cabinet Secretary in 2017. During the launch, they enthused that alumni engagement in alma mater is everyone’s civic duty:
Slowly but surely we are bringing civic engagement in the management of schools in the country. This enhances accountability, transparency and the space for dialogue.
While a culture of alumni community-building exists in Kenya, practice is sporadic and professional support is virtually non-existent. Alumni communities, therefore, exist as loose social networks rather than purpose-driven groups that can be mobilised to support young Kenyans through the school to work transition, provide social and governance capital to public schools and better advancement for alumni.
There are numerous alumni associations across private and public primary, secondary and tertiary institutions in Kenya. However, there is no singular body which can serve as a strategic body to engage with the government and other key stakeholders to contribute to the improvement of the quality of education in Kenya though direct and indirect alumni engagement.
By bringing together alumni across all institutions to improve the quality of learning in each institution, we collectively improve learning across the entire country. In this way, we invest in our future, so that when our communities face new challenges, such as the COVID pandemic, we can mobilize through our networks, and have structures to fall back on to support one another and our youth.