Program areas at RefuSHE
Girl's Empowerment Program (GEP) - Multi-phase accelerated education and empowerment program that allows participants to access basic education and vocational opportunities, learn about their human rights, and cultivate their leadership skills. GEP is a community that provides safety, healing, and skill-enhancement for girls and young women on their journey to self-reliance. Participants engage in alternative education, life skills, vocational training, and income-generating projects.
Case Management Program (CM) - RefuSHE's Case Management Program provides girls with access to psychosocial counselling, medical care, legal aid, and resettlement assistance. The program is designed to build girls' capacity to access services independently so that they know how to access them in the future, understand what to expect, and know how they should be treated. Girls in need also receive care packages with basic necessities, including clothes, hygiene kits, food, and diapers and enriched nutrition formula for new mothers.
Safe House (SH) - Provides protection and transitional shelter for unaccompanied and separated refugee girls under 18 years old and their children who lack adequate or safe living conditions. On occasion, we also shelter refugee women over 18 and young refugee boys under the age of 9 on a short-term basis with extremely vulnerable security cases. All residents receive intensive case management and psychosocial counseling in addition to shelter, nutritious meals, and material supplies to address their basic needs.
Livelihoods / Artisan Collective - The Artisan Collective is RefuSHE's social enterprise and income-generating component. Young women design, create, and manage a line of unique, hand-dyed fabrics, and other textiles while gaining production, manufacturing, and marketing knowledge. The Artisan Collective's business skills and financial literacy training curriculum serves as a foundation to their future success as entrepreneurs. Participants earn a stipend and are required to save $10 each month in a savings account. Through monthly earnings, members of the Collective can pay their rent, feed their families, and cover household expenses, while their savings help them to eventually launch their own businesses. Products from the Artisan Collective are sold in local and international markets and the revenue generated is invested back into our programs.
Community Outreach Program - Educates men and women in refugee-hosting communities about sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) prevention and response, women's rights, and refugee rights to reduce the protection risks our target population faces in Nairobi. The program's Women Ambassador Groups (WAGS) empower refugee women in the community to become community mobilizers and peer educators on these topics and provides them with business skills training and seed grants to grow their businesses. They in turn serve as protection advocates and foster care parents to refugee girls living in their community, as well as business mentors to girls transitioning out of RefuSHE's GEP and Artisan Collective.
Early Childhood Development Center - The ECDC program intervention response to the needs of young mothers with children below 5 years. The children are attended to while their mothers are engaged in the GEP learning or production in the artisan collective. Learning, development of motor skills through play, meals provision, provision of diapers, medical intervention and exposure trips- outdoor activities are some of the key activities.