Looking Back on Our startsocial Journey: Our Learnings & Future Plans

The past few months have been an intense and enriching experience for us at Future.Empowerment.Africa e.V.. Through the startsocial scholarship, we had the opportunity to develop our organization both structurally and strategically! 🚀

Why startsocial?

Each year, startsocial awards 100 scholarships to volunteer-driven organizations and projects. Being selected as a scholarship recipient was, for us, a small badge of honor. We had no doubt that we could benefit immensely from the long-standing expertise and professional network offered by startsocial.

Not only did startsocial match us with two highly experienced coaches, but it also pushed us both in terms of time and substance. Our primary goals were to refine our internal and external narrative, develop our organization further, and approach our fundraising efforts more strategically — and that’s exactly what we accomplished.

Our biggest learning from the coaching phase

1. A Clear Vision as the Foundation for Growth

In several workshops, we challenged and refined our mission and narrative. The result: our new vision “Education for Visionaries – Empowering a Generation of Change Makers.” 🌍

This clarity didn’t just bring us more alignment internally — it also helps us communicate our message more effectively to the outside world.

2. Structured Processes for Sustainable Impact

A strong vision alone isn’t enough — it needs solid structures behind it. So we:

✅ Defined our impact processes and mapped them out in a dedicated “process house.”

✅ Introduced our narrative as a standalone program to work on it intentionally — welcome to Hadithi (Swahili for "story").

✅ Developed 5-year goals and broke them down into strategic areas of focus.

✅ Conducted a SWOT analysis to identify our strengths and areas for development.

These structural changes are already helping us work more deliberately and efficiently.

3. Targeted Messaging & a New Approach to Fundraising

Another key takeaway was understanding the diversity of our target audiences. We realized that each of our programs addresses different groups — and we revised our communication strategy accordingly.

Especially in the area of fundraising, we’ve refined our messaging to engage companies, individual donors, and major donors more effectively. 🎯

What's next?

🔹 Implementing our new fundraising strategy — with a focus on corporate partnerships.

🔹 Expanding our programs — especially mentoring and coaching within the Hakuna Mipaka program. We’re also launching Hadithi, a brand-new initiative to actively reshape narratives.

🔹 Onboarding & community building for volunteers — we aim to further professionalize our volunteer structure.

The startsocial scholarship gave us valuable impulses — now it’s up to us to put them into action! We look forward to growing with our community and supporting even more young people in Kenya on their journey.

Want to support us on this journey? Become part of our movement and help empower the next generation of change makers! 💙

📩 Learn more now: www.fea-ev.com/en