Education
As one of our most impactful programing areas, Lifeskills Promoters continues to offer a range of Education Support Services (ESS) to students, families, and teachers. These programs are designed to help students reach their academic goals and achieve better success within their school and home environments, and enabling more positive outcomes by building capacities of teachers and communities to better support learners.
We have continued to partner with the Ministry of Education and other partners including UNICEF to create a larger spectrum of services that address the challenging needs of students and teachers especially in light of Covid 19. Our teams partner with schools, families, and communities to support students enroll, retain, and progress in school.
LISP has been actively involved in the national education curriculum reforms responsible for the creation of Kenya Competence Based Education as well as during the 8-4-4 system now being faced out.
Projects Implemented
Lifeskills Promoters (LISP), in partnership with ChildFund Kenya and Childline Kenya, successfully implemented the Safe CLICS project (2022-2025), funded by Safe Online. The project was carried out in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kikuyu Sub-county in Kiambu County.
Our Focus
LISP led efforts to strengthen early intervention and support for children affected by Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OCSEA) through:
Capacity Building
Training teachers, school leaders, and Boards of Management in 60 schools on OCSEA prevention and child-friendly referral pathways.
Peer Education
Empowering 1,380 peer educators to lead peer-to-peer dialogue sessions.
Community Engagement
Reaching over 30,000 children through interactive forums and participatory theatre, sparking open conversations on online safety.
Our Impact
Learners became more digitally aware, confidently identifying and avoiding online risks.
Teachers and school leaders are now better equipped to prevent and respond to OCSEA.
Life skills training and peer-led dialogues fostered a culture of openness, resilience, and protection within schools.
Early child development is an important period that is marked with emotional, physical, cognitive and social development. Research shows that children's holistic development is enhanced through good health, nutrition, stimulation, play, communication, protection and safety. To enhance the delivery of quality Integrated Early Childhood Development (IECD) services, multi-sectoral coordination and collaboration of all relevant line ministries is important to ensure that all children receive holistic nurturing care through provision of quality ECD services.
Lifeskills Promoters (LISP) through support from UNICEF is implementing 'Boresha Toto' project that focuses on nurturing children for holistic development through integrated early childhood development programme in Isiolo County. The project is part of the bigger UNICEF IECD intervention known as Let's Play, Spaces for kids to be kids.
Project Objective
To improve care giving practices among the children caregivers in order to promote holistic, inclusive, quality school readiness among the most deprived young children.
Objective Drivers
Building capacity of Isiolo County leadership to coordinate integrated ECD across all sectors.
Improving caregiving among frontline workers by improving their nurturing skills.
Promoting access to improved safe play and learning spaces at home, ECD centre and health facility by providing indoor play and learning materials as well as outdoor equipment in addition to training parents, teachers and health workers on how to develop play materials using locally available resources.
Strengthening community engagement forums to strengthen caregivers' skills.
Advocating for quality child protection programmes in Isiolo County.
Achievements
The project has established a coordination mechanism at the county level which include ECD Technical Working Group and ECD County Steering Committee. The two organs work closely to ensure integration of ECD services across line ministries.
ECD frontline officers, other Government Line Ministries officers including agriculture, health, education, children's office, registrar's office and interior coordination have all been sensitized on the importance of integrated early childhood development and the role they play in ensuring successful integration.
To improve caregiving among frontline workers, various capacity building workshops have been held for the different players including teachers, community health volunteers, health officers, area advisory council members, ECD officers and parents. LISP provide training on minimum standards of ECD, CCD and nurturing care, material development, child centred methodology of teaching and parenting skills training. LISP has held community mobilization forums to educate the community on child care practices such as proper feeding, good hygiene, importance of play and communication on brain stimulation and the role of parents in providing safe spaces for children.
To promote access to improved safe play and learning spaces, LISP has provided indoor play and learning materials and outdoor equipment such as swings, slides and sea saw to 30 ECD centres and 9 Health facilities including isiolo referral hospital. In addition to indoor and outdoor play and learning materials, LISP has provided child friendly furniture in all the 30 ECD centres and also assisted teachers in creating talking walls in their classrooms, a move that teachers say has significantly improved school attendance as children do not want to miss school due to the colorful classrooms.
Project Background
About 1 million school-aged children in Kenya with up to 30% living in Nairobi City are not in school. Although free Primary Education is now universal in Kenya, several challenges hinder children living within the informal settlements from accessing education.
The initial costs involved in enrolling children to school (cost of uniforms, admission fees, reading and writing materials) create a barrier to school enrolment since many parents and guardians live on less than 2USD a day.
Low levels of self-esteem and lack of life skills for personal development among the parents, teachers as well as the children, hinder school retention. In addition, most schools are not child friendly with some lacking basic facilities like toilets, water, desks amongst others utilities.
Achievement
The project identified, enrolled and retained Out of School Children back to school funded by UNICEF from 2016 through 2018. LISP initiated a targeted back to school campaign in the non-formal settlements of Nairobi focusing on 37,790 out of school children at the primary level.
Project Objectives
Increase Demand
To increase the demand by OOSC to attend school among communities in Nairobi Informal settlements
School Retention
To increase school retention among 37,790 OOSC in Nairobi Informal settlements
Quality Education
To increase quality of education for 37,790 OOSC in Nairobi Informal settlements
Gender Equity
To increase gender equity in the provision of education for OOSC
