Hi. Let's go. OK. So what is KenSAP and how would you usually introduce this to someone for the first time?
OK. So KenSAP stands for Kenya Scholar Access program. Historically, the organization was a nonprofit organization that focused nearly all of its efforts on college access for high achieving low income students who had graduated from Kenyan high school, usually at the top of their class or at the top of their year across the country. In a normal year, there's like 600 to 800,000 graduating high school students in Kenya. So we're really picking 20 students in a given year and putting them through a pretty rigorous college access program, so historically it was focused on this college access component. But over the last few years, particularly since when I joined the organization, we've also expanded our mission a bit to include not only college access but college readiness to prepare the students that we're helping access university to be able to succeed in university and do better in university when they arrive, and then we've also added a professional development/career development component to the organization as well to make sure that our students are using their education with longer-term career goals in mind. Uhm yeah, so at this point, I can hear it to be access readiness and success, if you will.
OK. Yeah. OK. Does this entry change based on who you're speaking to?
UM. Not really. Usually with everyone I do an overview like that and then depending on who I'm speaking to, there's a focus of the conversation, right? So like when talking to universities, say, Princeton admissions, they're much more interested in the access component and what goes into the access and readiness. We still talk about career development and professional development with them, because that's helpful for them to know our students have support.
OK.
The vast majority of it is on the access and readiness component. When I'm talking to a company like I was speaking to Blackstone in New York the other day, you know, they're happy to know about the access and readiness, but they're much more interested in the career development component of the work that we do. And so it varies in focus, but I think the overview is generally quite similar, no matter who we're talking to.
OK. OK. So yeah, in your intro you mentioned the demographic of students that you take. Would you talk a bit more maybe about like the process of admitting these students?
Yeah. So. I'd say our selection process begins at the end of secondary, at least historically, has started at the end of secondary school. There's a national exam in Kenya. And once those national exam results are released, we usually dive pretty deeply into a recruitment process. That recruitment process is usually a there's a passive component - you know our reputation has been built so much over the years in Kenya that in a lot of schools, students know about us, and our alumni are always spreading the word. We don't really have to do much in order to get a good number of qualified applicants to apply, and then we have a much more active component where we reach out to pipeline organizations. We think of them as in Kenya there are a lot of high school scholarship programs for high achieving low-income students. So we work closely with their program managers or program directors and spread the word through their networks. So that the highest high school scholarship students are sort of aware of them no matter where they are in the country. And then we have like a very active strategy where we're just like finding people in places where it's really hard to reach students that are interested. So sometimes that's a government official in someplace. This year we're working with Makueni County pretty closely because we've seen that in eastern Kenya there's not been that much activity over the years in KenSAP applications. So we're trying to identify great students there. We did something similar in Busia County last year. And then like just in Eastern Kenya, we've just found interested people, right? In very hard-to-reach parts of Kenya and we've just found interested people. They're not really government officials. I don't even know what some of them do for work. I just know that when the time comes, they're going to spread the wordabout the application and so through that, we usually find about 500 to 1000 super-qualified applicants, at least academically. We put them through a pretty intensive application process. Trying to find out about their interests and their academic background. But also about their family background and their upbringing and what their parents do and their parents, education and so on and then we also put them through a series of interviews, usually 2 rounds of interviews. And a couple of extra assignments. Sometimes we do some subject testing, and sometimes we do some written assignments end to end in person so that we can make sure their writing sort of matches the application they've submitted, and through that whole process, we're usually narrowing down to about 20 students in a year. And that number is usually limited by a few factors. One, our college access program is residential, so accommodations and funding, because we pay for absolutely everything during those few months of residential college access programming. We focus our efforts on the number of students that we really have the bandwidth for and the space for. But I think the bigger limiting factor is usually the fact that universities are picking up the financial aid for the student once they attend university. So since we're not paying for it, you can only work with a limited number of universities that offer full, need-based financial aid to international students, and there's only, you know, 50 to 80 schools that ever do that. Really, truly full financial aid, and in any given year, there are a few that we can count on every single year, they're going to have funding for a large number of international students and so 20 seems to be a number where we've settled where we feel comfortable that every kid who joins the program will get into school and we feel comfortable that we could serve those twenty kids when it comes to readiness too, over the time they're in school. And and. However, we have been struggling with the idea of like, hey, if we helped 30 kids and 28 got in, we are helping more students get into school. So it's a conversation we're having, but I think it'll take a couple of years to sort through that conversation closely.
OK. That makes sense. So yeah, you mentioned the part about funding and running this residential program. It's definitely not cheap. So how, how does KenSAP fund its operation?
So we're a 501C3 nonprofit org in the US. So a lot of our funding comes from US-based donors or grants from foundations in the US. We also have a charity set up in Kenya. We have some funding coming in from Kenya through alumni, but also through a big corporate-sponsored event that we have once a year. We have some events in the US around fundraising. And then we have some board members who are so committed to the organization that they are willing to, you know, tap into their own networks for really large donations. In the last few years, the most exciting thing has been seeing the alumni give back to Ken SAP. So at this point like in 2022 the alumni donations are out of their own pockets or matched by the companies that they work for. But alumni-generated donations accounted for something like 20 to 25% of the annual budget, and we're hopeful that in the future, you know, the vast majority of the funding will come from the alumni as the alumni grow older. They succeed in their careers as they look back at their lives and see the real turning point, and they'll consider KenSAP to be one of those turning points and they'll want to pay it forward for future students.
So yeah, something else, how would you describe the relationship between financial well-being and education accessibility?
The financial well-being of KenSAP, or for students, you say.
For students.
I think in Kenya we see a lot of similarities to the US. In some ways, it's easier to rise through the public education system in Kenya and reach. Uh, you know, a pinnacle, if you will, than it is in the US. In Kenya, there is a real culture of education changing lives. And you see it in the media. Like the top students in the country, they're often interviewed by the media. They're the media reporters. They travel across the country to some random home in the middle of nowhere to interview the family and interview the students and watch them celebrate. They get put on morning TV shows. I think to the US like that doesn't happen at all, right? Someone's valedictorian in their school. Nobody really cares anyway, right? But there are similarities. You know, there are definitely regions in Kenya that are underdeveloped, and schools tend to be underdeveloped in those regions too.
OK.
And it's much harder to get to the top when you're starting at a school that's near the bottom. We take this into account in our selection process a lot actually. Because we're residential and we're removing all those financial barriers to applying. We try to focus our energy on students who would otherwise not even be able to attend university in Kenya without financial issues. UM. And so a lot of our energy is often spent on figuring out our decisions. Like here's a great student, but they can afford university in Kenya, or they might even be able to pay for the SAT or pay for Wi-Fi at home to do their college applications. And here's a student with lesser scores. But definitely deserves the opportunity considering the background they've come through and the educational background they've had. I think it's similar across the world too. From what I've gathered, mentoring other college access programs or just talking with them that in a lot of countries, you know, financial success often leads to academic success. And I guess in some way that's one of the reasons that we do the work that we do. I was just talking to someone months ago and pointed out that one of the reasons that we do this, like why education they asked why are you working in education and not in agriculture or something like that? And I said to them you rarely meet a family whose parents are more educated than the children, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Like you're always trying to increase the education of the next generation. And so we feel like, oh, if we educate students abroad. At the best schools, they're going to see the value in education and their children and their communities and so on will start to see the value. And start investing in education in the future.
OK. OK. That's really interesting. So considering that you brought up the abroad part. I believe most of the KenSAO scholars go to North American universities. Do you think in a sense this contributes to brain drain? And how does KenSAP you know, navigate this topic?
So I don't think it really contributes to long-term brain drain. I mean say that it contributes to short-term brain drain like you're not on campus in Nairobi right now. But we are somewhat lucky working in Kenya, nearly all of our students have the urge to go back to Kenya eventually. We take a long-term view of this because we know how things work in Kenya and we know that impact doesn't happen because you have a degree from some university abroad or in the country. In Kenya, it takes like five years right now for a University of Nairobi graduate to even find a full-time job. Sometimes it takes five or six years just to finish that four-year degree in Kenya. So most of our students are moving home by the time they're 10 years out of high school, right? Some of them do because they don't get the right visa to stay and work others because they actually want to move home and start something or work in their home areas or or home country. What I'd say is that for KenSAP we get this question a lot from donors. American donors, I'd say not Kenyan donors. We never get the question from Kenyans. They actually want and encourage students to go get that experience and bring it back to the country, right? And they trust that the students love their country, right? And we do too. Like I said, we're lucky our students love the country and there's tons of opportunities back in Kenya to make, you know, to create change. But also to do so in a way that's, you know, lucrative enough for our scholars to come back to If you like, move a country or two over on the continent or in East Africa like that's probably not as true in Burundi or in DRC or other places. So we sort of feel lucky that when it comes to us, we don't really have to think too deeply about brain drain. And then the other thing that I always think about. Uh, two other things. One is that there are 800,000 students taking the national exam every year. We're working with 20 students, right, and those twenty students we feel have a lot more ability to create jobs. For those other 799,000 blah blah suit right students. If they have experience abroad, not just studying abroad, but also work experience abroad. A network abroad that allows them to invest or bring investment back to Kenya. And that's why we take the long-term view because we know that people who spend 10 years in the US and go back to their home country tend to have a much more impact than people who spend four years in the US and go directly back home.
OK. Yeah.
And then the other thing I always ask people is to think about when we get this question is you never hear it asked to American students right? Like, you know, a student from a from, I don't know, some state in the middle of the country say like Kansas, right? You never hear that student asked like, oh, are you going to go back to Kansas to make a change in your community? Like all communities have changes that need to be made but to us, it seems sort of odd that it's always being asked to African students. I'm sure it's also being asked to students from Myanmar or students from Thailand or Vietnam or wherever, but it's rarely being asked to domestic students. And so I always ask donors like, just take a moment to think about why you're asking that question when you know you're living in New York City but you grew up in a place that's not perfect. Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so we sort of push back a little bit on that question and we sort of think of a brain gain. More than brain drain.
OK, OK. That makes sense. OK, I feel like we're almost wrapping this up. So like two more questions. The first one is what role do you think private I guess, organizations, nonprofits, et cetera, play in education? I'd say in Kenya, but if you want to speak more broadly. Compared to like the government and is any of these players more effective and what does the partnership look like in your opinion?
I think nonprofits, NGOs or even private companies play a really important role in Kenya when it comes to education, a lot of them are the reason that students can access scholarships to attend school, primary school secondary school, and beyond. And then I think the government system in Kenya, they've built a very strong education system. But I think it's overwhelmed with so many students that they can't focus all the energy on every individual student. So it's actually helpful that NGOs exist for high school scholarships because oftentimes. It's not just financing the high school. It's also coming with a support system on campus for students and programming during school breaks and transportation to and from school. Because most schools are boarding in Kenya at the high school level, so a lot of NGOs play a really important role in filling the gaps that the government can't and can't really analyze and can't really figure out on their own. I think that uh, at the college access level there's not really a government program that supports college access abroad, and so the NGOs there are a few in Kenya, like KenSAP, the NGOs step in to fill that gap and help students transition to university abroad. However, we have been starting to have conversations with some government officials in Kenya about building out some sort of funding for education abroad and hopefully those conversations go somewhere. But we'll see.
OK, OK. OK. So yeah, now a bit about you and your involvement with KenSAP. What does your involvement look like? And I guess why did you choose to join the KenSAP Team?
So, OK, my involvement. I'm the executive director of the program and at this point, that means I doing everything under the sun that can be done for the organization. So internally running the operations, finances, strategy, and so on, making sure that the organization operates on working with our team in Kenya to make sure it's operating, whether I'm here or there. And then I also work pretty closely with the college, with the university admissions folks here in the US just making sure they know about our program. They know about our students, they know about the work that we do and developing those relationships at schools. And on top of that, obviously, I play a role in fundraising, finding new donors, and maintaining relationships with donors. And also have taken up, at least for the current time or development component of the program, though we are likely hiring a career development person director in the coming months, but we haven't found the right person yet. It'll be someone based in Kenya but who has experience in both the US or abroad and in Kenya and uh, that'll take a bit off my shoulders so. You say and why KenSAP - I don't have a good answer. I mean, it's sort of like if KenSAP lives in India, you maybe, you know, like it that may have fallen into my lap, right? Like why Kenya? I don't necessarily. I didn't have a good answer at the time but it sort of fell into my lap. I was on a trip to Kenya working with some students there as a volunteer and met some KenSAP scholars, and alumni and met the KenSAP board member and sort of got involved in mentoring students who are starting in the US or already in the US, and I quickly realized the gap in two areas, one in programming for the students once they're in university. So all that career development I spoke of and even the college readiness that I mentioned. And then two, I noticed a gap internally. There wasn't really a built-out organizational structure to the organization. It was really just like 1 Co-founder and a large donor that were supporting each other every year. But there wasn't really thinking about sustainability or structure or governance or programming and curriculum and stuff like that. So slowly we've been building out those structures over the last few years. And I think before I alluded to like why education because I feel like it's a well a few reasons. One, I feel like it's multi-generational like if I help Ian, I'm also helping Ian down the line and possibly his whole community and family members and so on that he's supporting as well. So I see real impact coming from education and then the other reason I see it from an American point of view is that I think America has to find a way to change the way it views certain parts of the world, and I think that by bringing people from those parts of the world into our systems and watching them rise, even in our own systems, like our alumni do, or our students do, they're the ones getting A's at the college level. I think that we can sort of change the way we think about other parts of the world. I feel like we are very heavily aid based. Thinking about partnerships and developing long-term partnerships between America and in this case, Kenya, I think that only comes from connecting people in interesting places. So sending a bright Kenyan student to Princeton and having them connect with bright American students and bright American professors to me long term will create change in both the US and back in Kenya.
OK, OK. Yeah, that was it for me. Thank you very much. Unless if you have any final words, I guess.
I want to know about the pictures behind your head, the sculpture?
OK. Haha.