Team Kinara
Our Programs
Kinara responds to the needs of our community. They expressed worries about the lack of reproductive health education, gender discrimination and few employment opportunities. Our programs are created to tackle these worries and to help empower the youth of our community in these areas.
Sexual Reproductive Health and Gender
Livelihoods
Protect your Dream
The goal of this program is to reduce teenage pregnancy. To achieve this goal, we conduct participatory peer education sessions at schools, in communities, and with other Kinara programs. Topics discussed include self-awareness, gender equality, gender-based violence, peer pressure, healthy relationships, teenage pregnancy itself, family planning and STIs/HIV.
Our main project in this program is called Protect your Dream where we establish and support the following groups of peer educators:
1. The first group is Big Sisters and Big Brothers, in which older secondary school students provide mentorship to younger students, to educate them on SRH and gender related topics, and encourage them to stay and succeed in school.
2. The second group is Strength of Mothers, a group of women who educate the community on the harms of gender-based violence and harmful cultural practices.
3. The third group consists of Community Change Agents, young people in the community who mobilize their fellow youth to participate in our peer education sessions, distribute condoms, and provide referrals to family planning services.
Earning Self-Dependence
The goal of this program is to increase job opportunities for youth. This is done by giving them marketable and practical knowledge and skills on how to provide for themselves. The program consists of two projects, namely Sewing Team and the Entrepreneurship Groups.
Our Sewing Team group of students come to our office every morning from Monday to Friday for ten months to learn to become professional tailors. Our intensive training provides them with valuable textile skills to enhance their employability and even to start their own sewing business.
In the Entrepreneurship Groups youth are given business education and support. This includes business plan preparations and connections to group registration and loan-providing institutions.
Education
Citizen Data for Advocacy
Bukua!
The goal of our Education program is to increase literacy and numeracy and to improve educational outcomes in annual and national exams. In the Bukua! project, which means "Study Hard!" in Swahili, we run various initiatives to help achieve these goals.
Five times a week an evening class is given that supplements regular school instruction with grammar review, exercises and team games in English and Math. We also work with local schools to identify students who can attend our classes and need extra educational support, and provide them with school supplies throughout the year.
Our Community Library welcomes all students to come and do homework, study for examinations, borrow school curriculum books, or read one of our more than one thousand non-curriculum books.
Based at our library, our students are welcome to the Saturday Morning Reading Club every week giving them access to books and to practice their English. On top of the educational goal, there is time for creativity, sports and games, and of course to make new friends. We are grateful for the volunteers who come read to our little rockstars every week. Thank you!
Visiting Morogoro and want to come to our reading club?
Working together
The goal of this program is to empower citizens, especially youth, to collect, analyze, and use data to spark discussion and advocate for change. This program consists of two projects.
The first project is Water for Life, a joint partnership between the Morogoro Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Authority (MORUWASA) and Kinara to help reduce Non-Revenue Water, increase water availability for customers, and improve citizen participation in government service provision. Using the mWater mobile application, we work with youth Community Change Agents to report water pipe leaks and other complaints to MORUWASA, and conduct monthly household water availability surveys. We are proudly supported by Innovation for Change - Africa as one of their Social Innovation Challenge 2018 grant winners.
The second project is Sharing our Stories where we work with CIVICUS and the DataShift initiative to learn and blog about the process of collecting contextual data for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16, Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. We run participatory workshops to understand citizens' experiences with SDG indicator 16.7.2, inclusive and responsive decision-making.
Interested in a partnership?
