High School Mentoring & Scholarships
For 20 years, Global Give Back Circle has worked with at-risk girls in Kenya, providing the education, mentorship, workforce-readiness skills, and networks they need to find work or start a business. More than 2,700 young women have completed college through this support, going on to become teachers, doctors, engineers, nurses, lawyers, and business leaders, including Kenya’s third Rhodes Scholar.
The Barrier
A girl’s path through school is shaped by more than her own effort. Families from at-risk backgrounds face financial obstacles at every educational transition, and school fees are the most common reason a promising student stops short of university. Even when the money is there, a girl with no one in her life who has reached higher education or built a career has little sense of what her own future could hold.
How it works
The program meets a girl where she is and builds the support around her. Each girl is paired with a personal mentor, someone who supports her to expand her sense of what is possible and stays in her corner. Global Give Back Circle has run this mentoring model in Kenya since 2006, and corporate partners including Microsoft, SAP, and Google contribute mentors through virtual mentoring. Microsoft mentors alone have funded over 600 university scholarships, with each hour of volunteered mentorship matched at $25 toward a mentee’s education.
Where we are now
The high school mentoring and university scholarship program is now institutionalized in Kenya, in partnership with five high schools supporting underserved girls. The strategy is to double down on impact at these schools, and ensuring as many girls as possible have an opportunity to continue on to tertiary education.