KEPSA in partnership with the Government of Kenya through the Ministry of Information Communication and Technology (MoICT) and with financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation is implementing Phase 1 of the Ajira Digital Project between April 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018. The project aims at bridging the gap between skills demand and lack of jobs and further seeks to gather lessons learnt to inform the project scale up. The Ajira Digital Project seeks to position Kenya as a choice of labor destination for multinational companies as well as encourage local companies and the public sector to create digital work. The overall objective of the project is to make Kenya a freelance hub and the global destination for online work by the year 2022.

The specific objectives of Ajira Digital project are to:

• Raise the profile of online work amongst all Kenyans;
• Promote a mentorship and collaborative learning approach to finding online work;
• Enable access to online work for all Kenyans; and
• Promote Kenya as a destination for online workers.

Specifically, Phase 1 of the Ajira Digital project aims to provide training to 10,000 youth (8,000 inexperienced online workers with basic soft skills and introduction to online work skills and 2,000 experienced online workers with skills to scale up their business) and; mentorship for the new online workers through hand holding by the experienced online workers thus enabling young people to work online and earn an income with dignity. This will ultimately contribute in achieving the country’s objective of a globally competitive knowledge-based middle-income economy in an increasingly digital world.

KEY PROJECT INTERVENTIONS

• TRAINING

The project targets to train youth (inexperienced (new) online workers) through a one week residential training. The training aims to equip the youth with basic soft skills and introduction to online work skills, digital marketing and basic financial management skills across five implementation locations in Kenya namely: Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Meru and Nakuru.

In addition, the project targets to train experienced online work freelancers through a 2 days training with an aim of equipping the selected online work freelancers with skills to scale up and develop their businesses into agencies and source for more work to share with new online workers. The experienced freelancers are ultimately expected to handhold the new online workers through one month mentorship.

MENTORSHIP

Upon successful completion of the training, the youth are transitioned to one month mentorship through handholding by the experienced freelancers. The mentorship is aimed at enhancing the trained youth’s skills on online work thereby increasing their access to online jobs.

 PROJECT ACHIEVEMENTS TO-DATE

• Curriculum for the training of inexperienced youth on online work and experienced online workers has been developed.
• A total of 7,168 (1,984 female) youth out of the target of 8,000 have undergone training and transitioned to one month mentorship through hand holding by online work freelancers already working and earning from online work.
• 125 experienced online work freelancers have been trained on entrepreneurship and gained skills on scaling up their online businesses.

Visit the link bellow for our success stories

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYqWFnUZyxWFsL3wNz0bnzA