My Virtual ATM.

One of the factors singled out for youth unemployment in Kenya is an increasing skills mismatch. The youth require relevant technical and vocational skills to match the ever changing labour and entrepreneurial opportunities. In today’s dynamic global economy, where the labour market is demanding and skills for specific occupations are constantly evolving, it is necessary to combine theoretical knowledge with practical skills that match the needs and demands of the job market.

The chance for Kenya and indeed the world tackling poverty by-extension will depend on the creation and expansion of creative and innovative opportunities by the youth to increase productivity. My virtual ATM is that platform which will empower marginalized communities, build resilience for refugees and spur creativity among the youth and women living on the Streets and in slums to come up with Create Innovative products after the life skills marketing and entrepreneurship training besides employability skills training.

Like majority of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya is steaming with a  youth bulge, out of 47.6 Million Kenyans 75.1% are youth below 35 years (KNBS, 2019). A large number of youth are increasingly found in the urban areas, particularly informal settlements. In the latest attempt to feed the labour market with masons, plumbers and mechanic to ease the growing unemployment burden in Kenya,  technical colleges received a Sh3 billion boost from Germany, but still ILO estimated that 18.34% of Kenyan youth are unemployed (H.pelcher 2020). Those youth with college diplomas, the skills acquired do not match the job market, this has forced many to turn to menial jobs which are also not readily available to meet and satisfy the basic needs and support their families. 

Refugees, street and slum youth are vulnerable due to lack of supervision and protection from caregivers. Sexual abuse and exploitation especially defilement and rape continues to be one of the most life-threatening acts committed in slums and streets. Women, young girls and boys continue to face the challenge of being raped or sodomized in their daily life as they seek food, water or even in search of a place to relief themselves.

Our solution is simply to create a platform for innovation that will anable youth and women to create Jobs, increase employability and to start and run business. Many youth are considered "un-employable" because they lack employability skills and experience. Apprentice Training Model is preferred because is it practical and cost-effective, it addresses ideological barriers like poverty mind-set, Spirit of entitlement, dependency syndrome, building resilience and morals & ethics. Apart from the vocational and life skills training, this model, also allows the:
✓ Mentee to learn the new and emerging trends in that particular area. 
✓ Mentee to master the business environment, and acquire marketable skills.
✓ The mentor to identify the areas of interest of the apprentice and narrow down to specific skills that the apprentice may seem to portray.
✓ Mentor becomes the link to business networks for his/her qualified mentees or the referee to job placement. 
Virtual reality is an emerging technology especially in Africa and it is able to revolutionize the learning and training in most organizations. Our program seeks to transform Apprentice Training Model to Virtual Mobile training school to reach Women, refugees, slums and street youth and pastoral communities who cannot access TVET institutions. 

Our project targets to empower women, street and slum youth, refugees and pastoral community by creating economic opportunities and creative platforms for engagement. In our quest to eradicate poverty among the vulnerable and improve the wellbeing of the marginalised in urban slums and poor rural areas, we established a good working relationship with street families, slum youths women and the government from the other projects we have conducted. We have also rolled out a baseline survey targeting key stakeholders in this area and social media engagement to sensitise the target population on our upcoming project 
We will also work with a wide range of stakeholders to support youth and women living with disabilities to access our services thus promoting their employability and capacity to create jobs.
This program will take a holistic approach to address the interconnected challenges to strengthen the socio- economic conditions of women, street and slum youth, Refugees and pastoral communities in Kenya. We will not only train them on how to find and keep a job, but how to work to a standard of excellence and how to identify and use entrepreneurial opportunities. My Virtual ATM will facilitate their access to technology, capital, and business networks.

The high demand for post-secondary education in the recent years has led to the mushrooming of private mid-level colleges; these Institutions are characterized by under-staffing, overcrowded classrooms and lack of good learning facilities and materials hence, the quality of teaching is sub-standard. High unemployment and skill mismatch has left many youth desperate and vulnerable to taking up risky jobs and engagements just to make ends meet. Many young people get thrilled when it comes to technology; “My Virtual ATM” project brings back that hope. We believe that our strategy is simple and easily embraced by our target group. 

Apprentice Training Model (ATM) has been used over the years; it gives the trainee hands on experience often geared towards highly skilled technical jobs in areas such as engineering and construction, carpentry, plumbing among others. Refugees, youths living on the street and in the slums may not have a chance to work or even have internship in the already established companies. The dream of these young people to create innovative products may not be tapped or die altogether. 

Our three-prong guiding principles — „We're learning what is working; We‟re sharing the knowledge; We‟re advocating for change‟ — form the basis of all our program.

While completing an internship is almost expected for any college graduate, seeking employment or Starting an Enterprise is toll order to many. Research shows that Apprenticeship almost guarantees one a high paying job once one successfully completes it. The main aim of this My Virtual ATM is to digitize, customize and localize this model to reach the marginalized members of the society.

Unlike other programs including the Kenya government Youth Employment opportunities project (KYEOP) under the ministry of youth and gender who address youth employability through the old mode of training and internship; our model embraces new technology, innovation and apprenticeship that can be deployed anywhere. We also offer post Apprenticeship support through the ATM Alumni, we become referee and link for the youth who seek job opportunities. Our main focus is to create a platform that taps into emerging jobs, entrepreneurship opportunities and creative space.

Apprentice Training Model (ATM) is a life skills training methodology where a mentee is attached to a mentor who is skilled and knowledgeable in a given area of interest. This is practical mode of study where the apprentice is able to learn new and emerging trends in the area of interest. Priority will be given to women, street and slum youth, refugees and pastoral community from highly vulnerable backgrounds and those with disabilities. 

Our approach introduces virtual and augmented reality that prepares young people and women with relevant skills and ideas to create innovative products and equipping them with entrepreneurial and employability skills that match the demands of a fast changing economy.
They will go through a vigorous augmented training and mentorship on Job readiness, group formation and management, starting and running their own businesses. We will also address ideological barriers; poverty mind-set, Spirit of entitlement, dependency syndrome and morals & ethics. By the end of the training the women and youth will be equipped with skills on how to:
✓ Create a professional profile and a business plan
✓ Find and keep a job.
✓ Work with excellence
✓ Create and registrar a business and working groups.
We will encourage the formation of groups and teams with common interests and incorporate the existing youth and women groups interested in mentorship and technical support in specialized areas like bakery, decoration and events management, interior and design, link and recommendation to access to capital and youth/women development fund and micro-finance institutions.

Virtual reality is widely applied in a variety of domains such as entertainment, educational purposes especially in medical training, in digital marketing and activism, in architecture and urban design, engineering and robotics and recently virtual reality is used in simulating real work places for occupational safety and clinical therapies. 

Our theory of  change is based on our three-prong guiding principles: — 

1. We're learning what is working.

3. We‟re sharing the knowledge.

4. We‟re advocating for and initiating the change.

The primary ways institutions train our youth is use of books and PowerPoint presentation. Despite the fact that many people learn better by doing, Colleges have stuck with this old model the only chance students get to do it practical is a three months internship program which is not a guarantee for the students. Our theory of change is that if Virtual reality (VR) training has been proven to effectively up skill employees and save costs for industry companies, Simulate work places and procedures for complex industrial processes, we can use virtual reality to bring the youth, women and refugees closer to distant work environment, innovative ideas and processes at an affordable cost.
Many young people and women just lack a platform to exercise their creativity and display their innovation. Our approach fills this gap by reaching them by using our mobile virtual ATM centers.

Cognizant to the fact it is too expensive to provide an apprenticeship training model to many youth at the same time, VR and augmented reality comes in handy. My Virtual and Augmented Reality as well as ATM plans to deploy customized, scalable training on youth entrepreneurship and employable environments that will spur creativity among our target group.

Currently we have been trying this model with 30 youth in Kibra who will be completing their program in June.

Next year we are targeting 1500 and eventually grow to 5000+

When my virtual ATM was conceived in 2019, have been working developing this concept, we are happy to mention that by the end of quarter two of 2020, 30 youth in Kibra will have gone through this model with 83% projected success. 

We have been Working closely with both public and private institutions/organisations in developing this program, involved the community in giving feedback on the same. We are still committed to delivering our services and championing for the rights of people living in the informal settlements and streets. We have widely collaborated with local and international.

We intend to pilot this project in two more communities (Refugees and street families) in the last quarter of 2020 and next year.
In order to eradicate poverty and any form of suffering among the vulnerable groups and improve the wellbeing of marginalized communities in urban slums and poor rural areas, we envision scaling up and replicating this program in other Counties across the country within the next five years.

1) Global COVID-19 pandemic: The state of covid-19 has changed the course of action for many organizations and governments. With the onset of COVID-19 late last year all the efforts and gains towards empowering the vulnerable youth may just retrogress. At its backdrop we have witnessed several cases of sexual violence, lack of food for the slum dwellers and street families, difficult in getting face masks, soap, water and sanitizers. 

2) Unpredictable political environment which surrounds Kibra, Nairobi and indeed the whole country especially during the general elections is around the corner. Political conflict and election violence present safety risks for staff and customers every election cycle. 

 3) Partnership and international expansion: We will be excited to meet and work with organizations already providing more accessible and scalable virtual trainings. Our solution has potential to scale tremendously across Kenya and internationally, we are exploring this opportunity through Solve 

In regards with Covid-19, we are adjusting our scope of work and strategic plan to align with the directions given by WHO and the Kenya Government for effective delivery of our programs. We continue creating community awareness and sensitization to the staff and volunteers on the requirements and strict adherence to the laid down standards of operations in curbing covid -19.

We believe that meaningful engagement of the youth and women will have a large contribution on reduction of political conflict and election violence. Besides offering services to the women, and the youth, we will intentionally engage them in forums and activities such as peaceful coexistence and conflict management processes.

Our solution has potential to scale tremendously across Kenya and internationally through partnership for development. We are not only exploring this opportunity through Solve platform  but will also continue working and engaging other stakeholders working with Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC), refugees and street children. 

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5 Full time staff.

6 - Volunteers 

The Executive Director is a Master's Student of Project Planning and Management  and a Bachelor of Arts Project Planning from The University of Nairobi. He has with more than 8 years of professional experience and expertize in project planning and management, Social work, as well as Community capacity building, and training.

The project Manager is forward-thinking Social Scientist with over six years experience in project management, Information and Technology, strategic planning, risk analysis  and formulating creative solutions.

Three project officers heading different programs each has more than 5 Years of Experience. They have Bachelors in Social work. Actuarial science and Microbiology respectively. 

The team is assisted by a project assistant with speciality in Finance and administration and Monitoring and Evaluation respectively. 

5 Community Ambassadors work with us on Volunteer basis, and are engage in various aspects of community mobilization, training and capacity training. 

We work through policy influencing and advocacy, capacity building, research and knowledge generation, networking and partnerships development.

Our organization supports orphan and vulnerable children through our education for all program, offer life-skills training and safe space dialogue sessions to women and youth in Nairobi and Kajiado Counties. Our Child protection, household economic strengthening to support the OVC, advocacy and gender main streaming activities have been made possible through the support from USAID (MWENDO, NILINDE), Hope of African Child Initiative (HACI), Care Kenya International, Kenya Government through Ministry of Health, Constituency Aids Control Council (CACC), Global Fund, Kenya Aids NGO Consortium (KANCO), Fanikisha, and Pathfinder – Child Fund among others.

To reach out to more women we often hold training sessions for each organized group. Here, we give them tips on Gender Based Violence, gender equality, Beijing Platform for Action 12 critical areas and the Sustainable development goals. In 2012 we formed a consortium of 8 organizations led by Dolphin Anti- Rape and AIDS outreach organization and E-way foundation where we trained more than 6,000 people in Kibra on anti-rape messages and self defence.

In the last 1 year of prototyping this concept we have seen that there are significant percentage and a market for affordable virtual solutions. We designed our project with our target population in mind. We considered its accessibility, deployment, technological, financial and technical sustainability. For the project success and sustainability, we believe in community partnership and ownership. Our major costs will be met by corporate and donor support with about 5 -10% contribution from the program alumni who doubles up as ambassadors and mentors for the project.

We are cultivating large-scale partnerships with institutional funders and governments who will help us to scale our solution so even more people in Kenya. We believe that each graduating team from this program will come up with innovative products and ideas that will significantly add to alumni contribution kitty in the next 5 years. National Government constituency development funds support to very needy students will help sustain a number of the youth in the program. Despite being a non-profit, 7% of our operating budget was via earned income in 2019. Our 4bYear strategic plan projects 2020/2021 goal to reach 12%, and aim at 34% by 2024.

We have a hybrid revenue model of philanthropic funding and earned revenue. The concept development and prototyping of this idea was fully sponsored by SACODEN Africa. We designed our project with environmental, financial and technical sustainability in mind. The youth who will have passed out on training and are employed will establish an alumni kitty where by they will agree to contribute certain amount on monthly basis which will be plowed back to the organization to help the other new recruited youth joining the program.

Network is key to us. We’re excited about being part of a network with organizations that are doing comparable work to exchange learning, advice and support. Solve to us is a great platform that will open doors for us to change-makers who have the resources and the expertise to help perfect our virtual ATM model. It will allow us to implement a clear and viable proof-of-concept program in the view of working towards a Public Private Partnership engagements (private institutions and governments)in delivery of our services to more people in need as outlined in our 2020-2024 strategic plan. 

Also, given our resourcing requirements to meet our scaling goals, and for our services to reach more community members, these connections will be vital to ensuring access to a broader pool of skilled persons from around the world who are willing to support us in training and mentorship of our beneficiaries. Through Solve’s global network, we look forward to learn from and meet with potential partners with technical/financial/strategic resources within and outside Kenya who will help us in developing and diversifying our impact to the community.

We have seen the impact of our project and it's potential to expand and reach many people. We however can do better when we got support and partnership.

1. Product distribution: in our pilot project that is set to start early 2021 or late 2020. We seek to deploy this project "on the wheels" especially for the street youth, Refugees and the pastoral community.

2. We welcome individual corporate institutions to help us in improving our Funding and revenue model.

3. Apart from social Media, we welcome any support in Marketing, media, and exposure

Our project is an open technological solutions that will advance the economic, financial inclusion of refugee, improve quality of life for women and girls and to some extend increase literacy rates among adults and advance digital literacy. 

United Nation High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) - Our organization would like to partner with UNHCR for purposes of learning new knowledge in working with refugees and providing excellent practices in supporting them.

The Andan Foundation- The main aim of My Virtual ATM working with the refugees is to promote their welfare by designing programs that creates and promote refugee resilience, self-reliance and integration whose impact is long lasting. Through partnership with Andan Foundation realization of these efforts will be made possible since Andan has the expertise and technical know-how in the implementation.

The General Motors- Through partnership with General Motors, our organization will be in position to deliver its ATM in youth program especially in the area of apprenticeship and virtual reality program. General Motors will be able to provide such expertise as workshops for our young people and use of their expertise as mentors and facilitators of ATM program

The Gulbenkian Foundation- Partnership with Gulbenkian Foundation will increase literacy rates among the elderly whom the program is working with to advance economic growth through greater digital literacy platforms. 

My virtual ATM is a platform which will empower marginalized communities, build resilience for refugees and spur creativity among the youth and women refugees to come up with Innovative products after the life skills and entrepreneurship training coupled with employability and marketing skills.

Women and girls living on the streets, in the slums and in refugee camps are vulnerable, they continue to face myriad of challenges.  Sexual abuse and exploitation especially defilement and rape continues to be the most life-threatening acts committed in slums and streets. Women and girls sexual violence in their daily life as they seek food, water or even in search of a place to relief themselves; this is even worse to those living with disability. Apart from life skills and employability trainings My Virtual ATM incorporate the sharing of knowledge and best practices on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) and Gender-Based Violence (GBV).

“Imagine I am a woman” is our virtual and Practical Prevention and Self Protection Education tool used to teach children, boys, girls, and women on how to identify and prevent sexual violence. We train them on how to easily defend themselves incase of sexual violence from perpetrators, how to break the silence about sexual assaults, girls and boys on unsafe abortion and to prevent unwanted/unintended pregnancies STIs and HIV infections.

Apprentice Training Model is practical mode of study where a mentee (Apprentice) is attached to a mentor who is skilled and knowledgeable in a given area of interest. The model will equip the youth with entrepreneurial skills and soft skills so that after the Apprenticeship period they will be able to start their own Micro, small Medium enterprises. Many youth who graduate from our TVET institutions have minimal a chances to work with companies like General motors leave alone securing and internship. Our model will enable working-age youth to build their skills through our virtual reality Apprenticeship training model. 
With the GM Prize we will be able to:
Document virtual training lessons from the General motors workshops for our young people to use.
Have volunteer trainers and mentors involved in our program. 
Deploy this program “on the wheels” for street youth, refugees and pastoral communities.
Link and recommend the youth to opportunities in their areas of interest to other organizations

Besides promoting youth employability through training and mentorship, we sensitize and promote economic empowerment for women and the aged through asset transfer; women are supported to start small mobile businesses such as mobile hotels, salon, charcoal/briquettes, while the aged are taught about chicken rearing and kitchen gardening. They are further mentored mobile money, M-swari banking and KCB - MPESA banking. From the accountability savings groups/teams where t table banking and marry-go-round is encouraged  we teach them risks of emerging mobile loaning schemes.

The support and funds from AI for Humanity will help us develop this project better to meet the guidelines like Social distancing as outlined by the WHO in combating Covid -19 pandemic. Just like NETFLLIX does today, we believe that through AI our ATM school will be able to reach many people around the globe  .

 At the growth stage we intend introduce specialized AI Apprenticeship Training Model that will cut on human resources costs and for efficiency.