RefuSHE
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Kenya is home to over half a million refugees and asylum seekers. Among the most vulnerable of these are unaccompanied and separated refugee girls and young women. They have fled persecution and violence in their home countries and have been torn from their families. While many have witnessed the death of their parents, others believe their families might be alive but have no knowledge of where they are. With very limited access to formal assistance in Nairobi for shelter, education and medical care, they often suffer from extreme poverty, as well as the physical and emotional scars from war, abuse, or exploitation.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Girl's Empowerment Program
Girls are enrolled in the Girls Empowerment Program (GEP), which is an accelerated education program (the equivalency of Kenya’s Grades 1 – 8) that allows participants to earn their Kenyan primary education certificate. In addition to literacy and numeracy skills, girls also receive life skills training in sexual and reproductive health, sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response, women’s rights, refugee rights, and peace and conflict resolution. Additionally, the children of program participants are cared for through RefuSHE’s on-campus daycare and Early Childhood Development Center. We also provide some public-school sponsorships for girls who qualify for formal secondary education in Nairobi.
The Safe House
Our Safe House takes in the most vulnerable cases, including girls with high security risks or those who are pregnant. Our current Safe House has the capacity to hold 70 residents and is a registered Children’s Charitable Institution with the Kenya Government.
Case Management
Case Management is a vital component of RefuSHE's trauma-informed holistic services due to the myriad of health, emotional, and physical protection issues experienced by unaccompanied refugee children and youth. In addition to conducting an intensive intake assessment, RefuSHE facilitates comprehensive case management to all program participants.
Each girl is partnered with a case manager who identifies and assesses her immediate needs and, if necessary, finds safe and secure housing for her and her children or siblings. Girls in need of housing are often transferred to the RefuSHE Safe House or to vetted foster and group homes.
Case managers help schedule appointments for girls and ensure they receive nutritious meals, adequate health care, counseling, documentation and legal support, clothing, and sanitary supplies. Each girl receives a healthy and nutritious lunch during her school day at the Girls Empowerment Program (GEP), as well as snacks and food baskets to take home, depending on the need. Case managers and counselors provide individualized support to each girl to aid her in the healing process after experiencing both physical and emotional trauma. New mothers are also provided care packages and parental coaching to support their children.
Community Outreach
RefuSHE frequently conducts trainings and workshops in Nairobi to raise awareness of the needs and challenges facing refugees, improving cohesion, tolerance, and acceptance between refugees and their host community. Additionally, RefuSHE supports Women’s Ambassador Groups (WAGs) in communities throughout Nairobi. The WAGs function as savings and support groups to help refugee women already living in the community to establish and maintain business enterprises. Women within these groups also volunteer as advocates and mentors for girls in RefuSHE’s programs.
Economic Independence
Alongside basic education, girls can begin learning entrepreneurial and vocational skills in tailoring and textiles. Girls receive training in topics including financial literacy, business development and management, customer care, sewing & tailoring, tie-and-dye, and creating patterns. After graduating from the Girls Empowerment Program, the young women can apply to join the Artisan Collective, RefuSHE’s social enterprise project. The Artisan Collective trains participants in resist-dyeing, a traditional East African craft, and in designing and producing products that are sold through international markets. Each Artisan Collective member earns a monthly stipend and is required to save a portion of it until she graduates from the program.
Advocacy and Research
RefuSHE recognizes the importance of educating our partners in government, the NGO sector, policy groups, and civil-society actors about the challenges experienced by the young women we serve. Our advocacy focuses on refugee protection, child protection, and the rights of women and girls. We work to ensure that asylum-seekers and refugees have the information, knowledge, and accompaniment needed to navigate registration and documentation processes successfully. We also work with our partners to expedite legal documentation, taking into account the unique vulnerabilities of unaccompanied refugee children, girls, and young women.
Where we work
External reviews
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Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of children who have access to education
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Women and girls, Immigrants and migrants
Related Program
Girl's Empowerment Program
Type of Metric
Context - describing the issue we work on
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
This is the overall number of beneficiaries that we serve across all programming including our Girls Empowerment Program.
Number of girls served in the GEP
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Women and girls, Immigrants and migrants
Related Program
Girl's Empowerment Program
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
This is our Girls Empowerment Program, made up of four levels equivalent primary school in Kenya.
Number of girls served in the Safe House
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Children and youth
Related Program
The Safe House
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Number of girls who passed the Kenya Certification of Primary School Education
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Women and girls
Related Program
Girl's Empowerment Program
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
This is the equivalent of the Kenyan Primary school system and is taken by both Kenyan nationals and our beneficiaries to graduate on to secondary school.
Number of girls that are resettled to new host countries
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Population(s) Served
Immigrants and migrants
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Our programs seek to provide refugee girls and vulnerable young women and their children with the short and long-term support they need in order to live safe and healthy lives. We provide our participants with basic education, early childhood development, life skills, safe shelter, medical & legal advocacy, psychosocial counseling, and capacity building. We know that when a girl is given the resources she deserves, she will grow into her full potential and become a catalyst for change in her community.
Currently, RefuSHE is looking at how best to serve its young women, considering a changing environment for refugees. Declining global resettlement rates have increased the need to further build RefuSHE’s programs as more refugee women and girls prepare for life in Nairobi in the long-term. With resettlement a dwindling option, our graduates now need additional support to transition from on-campus programming to life in the community.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
Girls are enrolled in the Girls Empowerment Program (GEP), which is an accelerated education program (the equivalency of Kenya’s Grades 1 – 8) that allows participants to earn their Kenyan primary education certificate. In addition to literacy and numeracy skills, girls also receive life skills training in sexual and reproductive health, sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response, women’s rights, refugee rights, and peace and conflict resolution. Additionally, the children of program participants are cared for through RefuSHE’s on-campus daycare and Early Childhood Development Center.
Alongside basic education, girls can begin learning entrepreneurial and vocational skills in tailoring and textiles. Girls receive training in topics including financial literacy, business development and management, customer care, sewing & tailoring, tie-and-dye, and creating patterns. After graduating from the Girls Empowerment Program, the young women can apply to join the Artisan Collective, RefuSHE’s social enterprise project. The Artisan Collective trains participants in resist-dyeing, a traditional East African craft, and in designing and producing products that are sold through international markets. Each Artisan Collective member earns a monthly stipend and is required to save a portion of it until she graduates from the program.
Our Safe House takes in the most vulnerable cases, including girls with high security risks or those who are pregnant. Our current Safe House has the capacity to hold 70 residents and is a registered Children’s Charitable Institution with the Kenya Government. Each girl is partnered with a case manager who identifies and assesses her immediate needs and, if necessary, finds safe and secure housing for her and her children or siblings. Girls in need of housing are often transferred to the RefuSHE Safe House or to vetted foster and group homes. Case managers help schedule appointments for girls and ensure they receive nutritious meals, adequate health care, counseling, documentation and legal support, clothing, and sanitary supplies.
RefuSHE frequently conducts trainings and workshops in Nairobi to raise awareness of the needs and challenges facing refugees, improving cohesion, tolerance, and acceptance between refugees and their host community. Additionally, RefuSHE supports Women’s Ambassador Groups (WAGs) in communities throughout Nairobi. The WAGs function as savings and support groups to help refugee women already living in the community to establish and maintain business enterprises. Women within these groups also volunteer as advocates and mentors for girls in RefuSHE’s programs.
RefuSHE recognizes the importance of educating our partners in government, the NGO sector, policy groups, and civil-society actors about the challenges experienced by the young women we serve. Our advocacy focuses on refugee protection, child protection, and the rights of women and girls.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Currently we record all of our programming results in excel to track growth and progress. Our field workers record all of our data through a combination of paper records and computer records, which are compiled by the Associate Director of the GEP. This data is thoroughly reviewed by the Chief Investment and Resource Officer. We use this data for grant reporting, donor relationship management, as well as impact reports.
RefuSHE is also looking to develop and foster strategic investments to digitize its case management software and inventory management system. RefuSHE is hoping to digitize its Case Management system by procuring and customizing a digital case management software that will allow the organization to integrate and consolidate its current M&E tracking tools and forms. The systems we are exploring could also potentially provide the ability to monitor and analyze progress in real-time, as well as streamline support services between programs and various implementing partners.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Since our founding, we have directly supported over 3,000 refugee children and youth through our award-winning holistic model, and have reached over 25,000 urban refugees and host community members through our sexual and gender-based violence community outreach initiatives in Nairobi.
RefuSHE is entering an exciting new phase as an organization. Since its founding, RefuSHE’s strategy development has been led by the US Board of Directors and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) who is also based in the US. Recognizing the importance of supporting the development of local executive leadership and moving away from the antiquated model of having the CEO based in the U.S. instead of where operations are conducted, both the US and Kenya Board of Directors voted to move the CEO position to Kenya starting on January 1, 2021. RefuSHE believes that now is the time for the social sector to look critically at how its structure remains rooted in our world’s colonial past. Our team felt strongly that now is the time to challenge that status quo and push donors to think about their own role in continuing a power dynamic that holds an unbalanced power in the Global North. Our goal is to not only successfully pull off this leadership transition, but to also serve as a model for others on how to put talk to action.
Throughout our 12 years of work, we have witnessed the impact that a strong education has on helping refugee girls and young women gain the skills, confidence, and resilience to build brighter futures for themselves and their families. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this important work to an abrupt halt. As soon as COVID-19 hit Kenya, our teachers, counselors, and caseworkers immediately began reaching out to girls via WhatsApp videos to provide tutorials, home assignments, and counseling, as well as check in on their safety and their young children. In partnership with Kytabu, a Kenyan Ed-Tech company, and the Mastercard Foundation, we have launched the design, development, and build-out of a customized digital E-Learning & Wellness Platform, that aims to support the hundreds if not thousands of refugee girls and women that we are unable to accommodate on our physical campus.
We are also looking for ways to deepen the types of mental health services we provide. Our trauma-informed programming has been a cornerstone of RefuSHE’s model since its inception. However, over the past two years we have been exploring ways to deepen our mental health offerings by infusing the newest evidence-based healing methodologies, from body-based healing modalities to Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), into our model. While our model has always included talk-based therapy, we recently rolled out a trauma-informed yoga program at our Safe House and have also established a dedicated room for yoga, mindfulness, and prayer.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
RefuSHE
Board of directorsas of 02/21/2023
Dr. Rosalind Raddatz
Julia Schmidt
Hani Masood
Nida Januskis
Rachel Henderson
Nicole Kamaleson
Dan Schoenfeld
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
The organization's co-leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Transgender Identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data