Inspired by the Swiss vocational training system and developed for the market needs in Kenya, the Hilti Foundation, together with Swisscontact and local Kenyan experts, launched PropelA, a dual education system for the electrical and plumbing trades. Focusing on underprivileged young adults and driven by more than 40 local leading firms, we provide theoretical and practical education for the skills required in the industry.

Every year, about a million young people flood the Kenyan labor market. Most of them have little chance of finding a job because they lack the financial means to attend college or university. Adding to the problem, the current Kenyan vocational training system is largely disconnected from the needs of the private sector.

Economic Empowerment is about enabling people in need to become economically independent so they can lead self-determined lives. Despite economic growth in Eastern Africa, poverty rates remain very high, with rural populations and the younger generation in major cities particularly affected. Our work in this focus area is based on two initiatives: enterprise development and vocational training.

After one year of intense preparations, the Hilti Foundation proudly announces its latest initiative in East Africa: For the first time, 120 young people will spend the next two years as an employed apprentice of one of 24 renown Kenyan companies and student of a specialized school, to be educated as a certified plumber or electrician. This dual training model is based on more than 100 years of experience in Switzerland and Central Europe.

Imagine, you are a smart girl with big dreams, but you have to leave school because your family can’t afford to pay tuition. Isn’t that unfair? While talents are equally well distributed all over the world, not everyone gets the opportunity to develop and use them. Agnes Wairimu Kagiri is 34 years old, married, and a mother of three who had to re-define herself and her future several times to live an independent and self-determined life.

Based on the Basic Entrepreneur Training (BET) program’s success, the Hilti Foundation has decided to launch “Enterprise Scale Up”, a project focusing on those microentrepreneurs who have already gone through the base program with ambitions to invest and profitably grow their enterprises. Until 2027, the project will reach 20,000 farmers, helping them to improve their livelihoods and to contribute to local rural economy and social development through scaling up their farming-based enterprises in Kenya and Tanzania.

Listen in this episode of In this Case to Werner Wallner (Hilti Foundation), Walter Irungi (small business owner), Dorothea Arndt (Hand in Hand International) and Jane Sabuni (Hand in Hand Eastern Africa) talking about how they partner to reach that goal: Helping people to develop skills, find sustainable jobs, start businesses and achieve a decent income, so they can afford a better living standard.

Globally, an estimated 63 million children are not attending primary school and one in four girls suffer educational disadvantage. Agatha, now in her forties, used to be one of these girls.

The project-based cooperation between the Hilti Foundation and Hand in Hand International started in 2017, when the powerful educational program in rural East Africa was implemented. The training teaches basic entrepreneurial skills, financial literacy as well as best practice on livestock farming.

Since 2017, more than 16,000 women and men in Kenya and Tanzania have escaped extreme poverty. Felista now leads a more self-determined life and has already diversified her micro-business to be even more resilient.

Since 2018 the Basic Entrepreneur Training, a powerful educational program, has proven to be a successful way to fight extreme poverty in rural East Africa. Facilitated by the Hilti Foundation and led by the NGO Hand in Hand International, the program’s goal is to teach members of self-help groups how to start a micro-business and generate sustainable income.

Through our focus area of Economic Empowerment, we are enabling people in need to become economically independent.

Mary is a seamstress in a rural community in Kenya. Her husband works as a carpenter in Nairobi. Nevertheless, the money they earn together is not enough to enable even one of their three children to progress beyond elementary school and learn a trade.

The Hilti Foundation has been working with Hand in Hand International for three years in implementing powerful education models to create small enterprises in rural East Africa. The goal is to create sustainable income and long-term jobs for the local people so they can afford a better live by themselves.

During a global pandemic, the world largely concentrates on those places that have been hit the hardest in terms of number of infections and deaths. Other global megacities have been subject to a more silent, yet possibly more fatal, surge in infections.