Making an impact: Unifrog's outreach work in Africa

Hannah White, International Partnerships Lead at Unifrog, tells us about two school communities in Africa who’ve been using Unifrog to grow their students’ potential.


First steps: Meeting Starehe Centre and School in Kenya

In the heart of Nairobi, Starehe Boys' Centre and School is recognised as one of the best national schools in Kenya. Founded in 1959 as a rescue centre, it's become a top-performing school with a star-studded pool of alumni including politicians, Olympic gold medallists – like 800m athlete Paul Erung – and CEOs.

70% of the school’s population are considered ‘in need’ and apply from all over Kenya, meaning they would have otherwise dropped out of school after primary education; their families are unable to pay the fees but the boys are considered to be incredibly intelligent. The other 30% pay premium fees which keeps the education and board free for the rest of the students.

Patience Fanella-Koch, who sits on Unifrog’s advisory board, has spent time helping to upskill the incredibly hard-working college counseling team at Starehe. Spotting a potential gap in careers provision, particularly related to CV/resume building and the development of core skills, Patience reached out to the Unifrog team to see if we could help.

Initially connecting virtually with the college counseling team, I had the opportunity and pleasure to visit Starehe to deliver some in-person Unifrog training in November 2022. A select number of students, who will all go on to study in top institutions around the world, will be using the Unifrog platform over the coming months.

Primarily, they will look at the ‘Recording what you’ve done’ section to help them to really focus on developing their key skills and to build their extracurricular portfolios. They will also be using the CV/resume tool to help them to structure their experiences to prepare them for those all important next steps after school.
Growing our impact: Reaching out to Malaika

Inspired by my time at Starehe Boys’ Centre, the International team at Unifrog have been busy investigating other ways we can look at extending our social impact. One way of doing this is to explore partnerships with schools across the world making a similar impact.

To this end, we’ve recently begun onboarding Malaika, a school in Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The school prides itself on providing free, accredited primary and secondary education to 400 girls.

100% of the school’s Year Six students have passed their national exams four years in a row. Upon graduating, many of the school’s students attend technical college or university, or are recruited by local businesses in internships.
 

Next steps: Expanding our reach

At Unifrog, we put having a positive social impact before anything else. We hope to build more partnerships with international schools making a difference in their communities, all in the aim of achieving educational equity for all.
If you’d like to learn more about the social impact work we’re doing in schools across the world, please get in touch with hannah@unifrog.org. We’d love to hear from you!