FROM KENYA
MENTORSHIP PROGRAM
All our scholarship recipients are automatically enrolled in our mentorship program. The mentoring program’s goal is to help the young women and men in the SeaVuria Taita community to cultivate a strong character to meet their highest potential.
We believe to do this we must consider empowering and creating awareness in key areas that affect a young person. For us, those key areas are mental health, sexual-reproductive health, character development, skill building and teaching our scholars to use their voice through advocacy.
We believe the friendships between the students in the Seattle-area and our scholarship recipients reinforces the importance of these areas of growth and supports their journey in character development.
SCIENCE EXTRAVAGANZA
The Science Extravaganza is an annual event by SeaVuria that involves the 10 SeaVuria partner schools. The goal of this program is to inspire students to be advocates for their communities by creating, developing and refining their innovation ideas that will help solve community problems.
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We believe it is important to instill in the students care for their communities even as they pursue individual dreams. We believe that STEM is a paramount tool for students in their advocacy.
The extravaganza also prepares students for STEM fields and to have them further develop critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, public speaking, and written skills.
We believe the Science Extravaganza is a wonderful enrichment activity that will expand in-school STEM studies, immerse learners in solving STEM problems, and prepare them for a future career in the sciences, mathematics, and technology.
The event is hosted at the local university Taita Taveta University, which exposed our students to a college campus and inspires them to dream about their post-secondary education.
TEACHER PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
Each month, Science and Math teachers from the 10 SeaVuria schools come together for professional learning. We meet on Zoom for two hours monthly to focus on pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. The goal for our teachers is to learn more student-centered strategies to help more students find success in science and math. The sessions are attended by 50-65 teachers.
The structure of our workshops is to focus on new learning, to give teachers to process those ideas within the context of their own classrooms through conversations in breakout rooms, to reflect on how to take that learning into their classrooms, and to give feedback on the effectiveness of the sessions. In the intervening weeks, teachers try these new strategies in their classrooms and share with each other their success and questions through videos and chats in WhatsApp.
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We are so impressed with these reflective practitioners and the important work they do for students under the most challenging of conditions. We currently signed an Memorandum of Understanding with Taita Taveta University to partner with the professors at the university on these professional learning opportunities. We are excited for the opportunities in front of us.