It was quieter than I expected.

I had imagined this moment many times: the first day we would receive the first cohort. I had pictured something ceremonial. What arrived instead was ordinary — a knock at a door, a young man with a small bag, looking at the floor.

His name is not something I will share here. He was discontinued from care at nineteen. He had been sleeping on the floor of a friend’s apartment for six weeks, too ashamed to tell anyone he had nowhere of his own.

He is one of six young people we have enrolled this quarter.

What the first months have looked like

Each arrived through a different door. Three were referred by children’s homes that had reached the end of what they could offer. Two came through word of mouth — one from a social worker we had worked alongside at Child in Family Focus Kenya, one from a church leader. One found us herself, through a friend who had heard of the programme.

Every one of them had spent time in institutional care. Every one had aged out or been discontinued. None had a clear path forward.

We started where we always said we would: slowly, and with whatever they needed most.

  • Two are now enrolled in technical training — one in catering, one in carpentry.
  • Three are in weekly counselling, beginning to name things that have never had names.
  • Two have legal matters we are working through with a pro bono partner.
  • One is simply resting, for the first time in a long time.

What we have learned

The need is exactly as urgent as we feared. In the time it took us to enrol six young people, we had to defer eight more. The gap between what institutional care offers and what the adult world demands is as wide as ever.

We have also learned that the model holds. Not because we have a programme. Because we stay.

The young man with the small bag came back. He has been back every week. He said something to one of our team that we keep returning to: “I thought you would forget me.”

We did not forget him.

What comes next

Our next intake opens in September. We are documenting the model carefully, because what works here needs to be transferable — to other counties, other organisations, other practitioners who want to do this work well.

If you want to stand with us as we scale, the most meaningful thing is a monthly gift. It is what lets us look a young person in the eye and promise we will not disappear.