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Adopt a mentee. Sponsor a journey.

The BGHUB Kenya Scholarship Programme pays the way for people who have the ambition and the qualifications but not the fee. A sponsor covers the cost; the mentee brings the commitment. What the scholarship buys is not a certificate but a pathway — a mentor, a skill, real practice, a portfolio of evidence, and a route into work or enterprise.

Sponsor a mentee How the programme works Download the brief (PDF)

USD 150Takes one mentee through a three-month bootcamp
3 monthsMentorship, skills, practice and a portfolio
2 pathwaysEarly career, or enterprise
You chooseOne, five, ten, a cohort or a whole pathway

Why The Programme Exists

Ambition and paper qualifications are not the scarce things. Access is.

What is usually missing

Most people who come to us are not short of drive. They are short of the things that turn drive into a living.

  • An experienced mentor who will actually answer
  • Practical work experience, not just coursework
  • A professional network to be introduced into
  • Exposure to how a business really runs
  • An opening at the point where careers begin
  • Capital, and the financial discipline to use it

What the scholarship removes

The financial barrier, and nothing else. Everything after that is earned. The mentee still has to show up, do the work, take the feedback and produce the evidence. A sponsor is not buying an outcome for someone; they are buying that person the chance to go and get it.

The goal

Expand equitable access to mentorship, practical skills and economic opportunity for deserving people facing financial barriers. In practice that means full or partial scholarships, mentors matched to mentees, competencies built and demonstrated, portfolios of real evidence, early-career and enterprise routes, and the habit of saving and investing.

One Complete Pathway

Each stage only makes sense because of the one before it. A course on its own stops at the certificate.

1Mentorship Matched to someone who has done the work, and who will hold the mentee to it.
2Skills Technical, digital and professional skills tied to an actual job, project or task.
3Practice Real work inside a live operation, supervised, with real consequences.
4Portfolio Documented evidence of what was done, which is what an employer or client asks for.
5Opportunity An internship, a job, a first customer, or a business of one's own.

The point of the whole thing: a mentee who can demonstrate capability, not one who can present a certificate. Attendance is not the measure — movement towards opportunity is.

Two Ways Through

The mentee chooses, with their mentor, which route fits where they are.

Pathway A — Early career

A three-month virtual bootcamp, ending in an internship or employment. Skills, then portfolio, then placement.

  • Career direction
  • Digital skills for workplace collaboration and productivity
  • Technical skills for a specific job, project or task
  • Professional communication
  • Research and analytical skills
  • Workplace behaviour and cultural integration
  • Portfolio, CV and interview readiness

Pathway B — Enterprise

Business apprenticeship first, business ownership later. The mentee learns inside a working business before risking anything of their own.

  • Customer experience
  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • Revenue budgeting
  • Operations budgeting
  • Financial management

“You do not have to own a business to learn how to run a business.” — Dr. Peter Kithuka, CEO and founder

The Enterprise Journey

Start small. Learn the business. Earn, save, invest, build, own, scale.

1Learn Inside an existing brand, where the customers, products and systems already work.
2Earn As a brand representative, on real sales to real customers.
3Save Through BG Microfinance, in amounts that match what the work actually pays.
4Invest Savings put to work rather than left sitting as a balance to dip into.
5Build A product or service of their own, developed while still inside the ecosystem.
6Own Their own brand, on their own terms, with the trading record to back it.
7Scale Grow it, and become the person who creates the next opening for somebody else.

Why Start Inside Someone Else’s Business

Starting a business too early exposes an inexperienced person to risks that teach them nothing except how much they lost.

An existing brand is a teaching environment

  • Customers already exist
  • Products and services already exist
  • Operating systems already exist
  • The mentee can practise before taking a major risk
  • Experience is gained before ownership is taken on

Experience before ownership

Skills before capital. Knowledge before risk. A mentee who has sold, budgeted and answered to a customer inside a working business is a very different prospect from one who has read about it. The order matters more than the speed.

BG Brand Hub is the bridge

Mentees begin as brand representatives for existing brands on the marketplace, taking technical mentorship from experienced business people, before creating and growing anything of their own. See the brands.

How The Ecosystem Carries It

One connected route from human development to economic activity.

BGHUB

Mentorship, learning, WorkLog and supervised practical experience. This is where the scholarship is spent and where the evidence is recorded. Learning Hub.

BG Brand Hub

Existing brands, real customers, sales and a marketplace. The commercial bridge between being mentored and being paid. Brands.

BG Microfinance

Savings, investment and financial discipline, built before anyone is encouraged to expand. Because the saving is documented, the hub can speak for a mentee’s financial record when they later seek a grant or a loan. Microfinance.

The outcome the three are aimed at: a skilled person, who becomes a worker, who becomes an entrepreneur, who becomes a business owner.

The Adopt-a-Mentee Model

Three parties, each with something to bring.

1The sponsor Provides the financial support that removes the barrier, and receives a report on where it went and what came of it.
2BGHUB Kenya Provides the mentorship, the learning, the practical placement and the supervision, and keeps the record.
3The mentee Provides commitment, effort, evidence and accountability. The scholarship is not unconditional.

Who Can Adopt A Mentee

Anyone who would rather fund a person than a line item.

Who sponsors

  • Individuals and professionals
  • Corporates and SMEs
  • Foundations
  • Development partners
  • Professional associations
  • Kenyans in the diaspora
  • Philanthropists

How much to take on

  • Adopt one mentee
  • Adopt five
  • Adopt ten
  • Adopt a whole cohort
  • Adopt a pathway, and fund a track end to end

What a sponsor gets back

Not a plaque. A named mentee or cohort, a record of what the money paid for, the portfolio evidence the mentee produced, and an account of where they went afterwards — first job, first customer, or first business. Sponsors who want to stay anonymous can.

How The Programme Works

A closed loop: what happens to one cohort is used to improve the next.

1Fundraise Sponsors commit to a mentee, a group or a pathway.
2Apply Candidates apply. No screening on level of education — that would defeat the point.
3Select Selection on need and on commitment, against published criteria.
4Match Each mentee is matched to a mentor working in their field.
5Develop The three-month bootcamp: skills, direction, communication, analysis.
6Practise Supervised work in a live setting, logged as it happens.
7Document The portfolio is built from the work, not written up afterwards.
8Transition Into an internship, employment, or a place as a brand representative.
9Track Outcomes followed up, and fed back into how the next cohort is run.

What We Measure

Success is movement towards opportunity, not attendance at training.

Access and participation

  • Scholarships awarded
  • Completion of the programme

Capability

  • Skills demonstrated, not merely covered
  • Evidence documented in a portfolio

Progression

  • Internship or employment progression
  • Progress towards business ownership

Discipline and outcome

  • Saving and investment behaviour
  • First job, first customer, business growth

The theory of change, stated plainly: if people get access to mentors, practical learning and real experience, they build capability; capability plus connection produces an opening; and an opening plus financial discipline produces income that lasts. When access, capability, opportunity and discipline reinforce one another, economic participation becomes achievable rather than aspirational.

Don’t just sponsor a course

Help someone find a mentor. Develop a skill. Gain practical experience. Enter work or business. Learn to save and invest. And eventually build something of their own.

Adopt a mentee Apply as a mentee

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