At the beginning of Term 2, Jeanne Sere, our Form 3 student and a philanthropist in the making, was nominated to be part of the Ashoka Globalizer event. She was invited to share her journey of change-making on stage and the hosts were honored to have her. 

Purpose projects

Secondary School students are encourage to find real life purpose projects that they want to get involved in. We believe that students who show a sense of purpose have a deeply developed intrinsic motivation to achieve a goal or take part in an activity. This means they are not motivated to achieve something simply because they can, because it is hard, or because they get rewarded or recognized for it. Rather, they do it because they have a deep internal interest in pursuing it—and derive pleasure from the process.

Above: Jeanne Sere at the Ashoka Globalizer event earlier this year.

Re-use and recycle

Jeanne noticed an opportunity in reusing and recycling clothes. Through identifying this need, she began collecting old uniforms and clothes from her peers and converting them into other garments or simply donating them to the needy. Earlier this term, she collected a total of 600 kilograms of clothes and shoes. 

A valuable investment

In April, her project, SMILES received a Ksh 20,000 award from Africa Collect Textiles for her stellar achievements. “We as Africa Collect Textiles are happy to be a part of Jeanne’s launch of textile collection at Nova Pioneer High School. This launch resulted in a gain of approximately 600 kilograms of Textiles and Footwear ” – Africa Collect Textiles. We congratulate and stand by Jeanne as she continues to further this project to greater heights.