In January we met Jenny. Jenny, a student at San Jose’s Yerba Buena High School showed a keen interested in getting involved. Undaunted by her inexperience with fundraising, she reached out through our Youth in Action Contact form. She demonstrated not just initiative in volunteering the resources of her school club, Yerba Buena Pride, but also an enthusiastic inquisitiveness to understand the process of raising money to purchase desks for students in Africa.
Jenny asked all the right questions and with help from The Tenacious Group, a local non-profit, developed a plan and assembled a team. They split up duties and delegated tasks such as researching schools in need of desks, fundraising strategy, and publicizing their project. With the goal of raising $400, volunteers went a step further with personal targets as well as group ones. Using flyers and social media, YB Pride managed to raise $440 for a total of 11 desks to lift students off the floor at Alton Maasai Primary School in Kenya.
Their teamwork and accountability was instrumental in achieving their goal, and they learned a lot along the way. In addition to learning collaboration, initiative, and commitment, they gained a profound sense of solidarity with their peers in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as an understanding of the differences between our systems of education and the adversity that students face in rural African communities. More fundamentally, our Youth in Action participants from Yerba Buena High School developed a heightened sense of the importance of education and its role in empowering us to realize our potential and shape our future.
Follow YB Pride’s lead and learn more about Asante Africa Foundation and how you can change students’ lives in East Africa by e-mailing us at yia@asanteafrica.org.
Our Youth in Action program makes it easy for young people to learn and understand more about our mission. It has increased students’ awareness of education inequality while supporting their peers in Kenya and Tanzania.
Share your ideas with us and we can help you get started!
