Mastercard Foundation Partnership Increases Access to Education, Mental Health Services, and Economic Progress for Urban Refugees
RefuSHE is built on the notion of resilience, the belief that equipped with the right skills and social support, all refugee girls and women can overcome trauma and rebuild their lives. The same notion is true for our organization. When we face a crisis, we see the disruption as a time for innovation and rebirth. In the face of hardships caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, RefuSHE’s spirit of resilience and innovation has led us to an exciting new partnership with Mastercard Foundation.
Brought together by our shared commitment to empowering refugee girls and young women to reach their full potential, the Mastercard Foundation COVID-19 Recovery and Resilience Program will support RefuSHE’s efforts to scale two ground-breaking projects over the next year:
E-Learning & Wellness Platform for Urban Refugee Women and Girls
Education and mental health services are the cornerstone to building confidence and resilience in refugee girls. As COVID-19 safety regulations brought all our in-person classes and services to a halt, our teachers, counsellors, and caseworkers rapidly adapted and began using WhatsApp and Google Classroom to continue providing tutorials, home assignments, and counselling to our 160 girls. From the initial successes of our emergency digital learning approach, we quickly realized that digitizing our holistic model could be the solution to another ongoing challenge: how to scale our transformative services to reach thousands more refugee girls living across Kenya’s urban communities and beyond that we are unable to serve on campus.
Over the next eight months, RefuSHE will co-develop, with Kenyan Ed-Tech company Kytabu and Kenyan mobile counselling service Wazi, a new E-learning & Wellness Platform. The service will digitize RefuSHE’s unique academic curriculum and well-being services to catapult our reach across urban refugee communities in Kenya.
Emergency Economic Recovery for Women Refugee-Owned Micro-Enterprises
Opportunities for economic mobility are essential to creating a supportive environment in which young refugee women can thrive. RefuSHE currently supports 223 refugee women and micro-business owners in Nairobi with financial aid and coaching to kickstart their enterprises. While serving their communities with a variety of micro-business services including tailoring, these women also act as vital community educators on sexual and gender-based violence and as mentors to the young women exiting our campus program interested in starting their own micro-enterprise.
As with many small businesses across the world, our micro-business owners have seen a dramatic drop in income due to the current economic crisis and are struggling to survive. With the support of Mastercard Foundation, we can begin the essential task of economic recovery for these micro-entrepreneurs in Nairobi so they can continue to contribute to their communities.
The road to recovery and greater opportunity is never built alone. We are delighted to welcome Mastercard Foundation, Kytabu, and Wazi into our growing network of partners committed to the academic and economic progress of refugee girls and women. You too can be a part of this pioneering work at a critical stage in RefuSHE’s history by becoming a donor. Join us in unlocking the full potential of refugee girls!