Expanding Senegalese Youth Education Through Storytelling and a Pilot Program
Client: Jeunesse Action (translates to “Youth Action”).
The Ask: To design a strategy for developing a non-profit youth program and communicate the story to current and potential donors. This is not one discrete project, but rather is the product of ongoing, periodic collaboration from 2018 to the present.
Methods used: One-on-one interviews, strategic conversations and planning, content strategy, storytelling.
Languages: English, French.
“Rachel worked with me from the very beginning to develop a vision for Jeunesse Action’s communications strategy and a plan to implement that vision. She was instrumental in designing a website and a newsletter that communicated our value proposition to our donors and supporters and as result, we successfully raised the funds we needed to launch our work. I continue to work with Rachel and highly recommend her services to anyone seeking to grow their reach and impact.”
Impact: Students who participate in this program are less likely to drop out of school, which can affect their life trajectory, particularly for female students.100% of the participating students come from families who do not otherwise have access to enrichment activities after school. 95% of students who participated in the program, who were previously struggling academically, passed their school exams. Reaching larger audiences with the story of this work has garnered additional funding for the expansion of the program.
Research Insight: There were some key concerns potential donors had that were not adequately answered on the website, because not enough information was available. Once we put more details on the program it became clear that, for instance, this program is run entirely by local youth, and was not hiring expatriates or Americans to run the program. This assured potential donors that their donations were being used appropriately.
Process: This engagement involves both strategic planning and content strategy. Since 2018, I have been working with the founder of Jeunesse Action, Mamadou Ndiaye, and the organization’s board members. I’ve been thrilled to work on something so closely aligned with my doctoral dissertation work on education in West Africa. The organization has a great vision supporting youth to solve the communities’ most pressing needs through service, academic, and leadership enrichment activities.T he need was to communicate it effectively to potential donors and implement the vision.
First, we worked on clarifying their vision and re-working their website content. Later, we came up with a regular cadence of communications with current and potential donors with a newsletter, as well as story and content ideas. Sometimes this involved me interviewing those who work on the program to hear their stories and share them with a larger audience. We also have worked on combining photography with narrative prose. We kicked off an initial round of fundraising, and in 2019, together we came up with the idea of a pilot program, and Mamadou and his colleagues implemented it with funds from the previous fundraising rounds.
Updates: The program has been running successfully since the pilot in 2020, though there have been some pauses due to Covid and some political unrest in Senegal. The program was able to continue to operate during school shutdowns in Spring of 2020, tutoring virtually via Whatsapp. It has grown from serving 31 children in 2021, to 75 in 2022, to over 90 children currently in 2023. Jeunesse Action now works even more closely with the host school’s classroom teachers, and, based on feedback from the school, works with children who are one year earlier in school, both for earlier intervention and because they were in need of more support.