Oliveseed

Our Values

Literacy for all, fair and equal access to knowledge and opportunities, love of learning, strong community, cross-cultural friendship, sustainable way of life, and a healthy environment

Our Mission

To uplift disadvantaged communities through access to quality education and learning resources; livelihoods that empower women; and environmental stewardship through community engagement and our own practices. To do our work in a respectful, collaborative manner that builds trust and spreads friendship.

We are part of the communities where we work. We begin our programs as collaborative pilot projects, learn what works, iterate, and then build them to be expandable, scalable, and community run.

WHY MAASAI MARA, KENYA?

The Maasai Mara of southwestern Kenya is one of the most disadvantaged regions of East Africa. Only 11% of young people here enroll in secondary school, and the area has the highest dropout rate and highest teen pregnancy rate in Kenya. When families can't afford to send their children to school (which often happens), girls are usually the ones to drop out and are often forced into early marriage. Many girls in the region are still going through FGM.

We transform the poorest public schools in the Mara, both primary and secondary, by setting up quality resources including libraries and science labs and providing literacy and writing opportunities. We also help teen girls stay in school through scholarships and by distributing sanitary kits so they don't need to leave school once a month. We firmly believe that children in the poorest regions of the world should have access to the same advantages that children in more privileged places have; and we've found that outfitting the poorest public schools with meaningful resources changes this trajectory for the greatest number of students.

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Most adult women in the Maasai Mara lack literacy and marketable skills, as they did not have opportunities for education when they were young. And yet, they hold their families together through the hard work of domestic life. We run the co-operative Oliveseed Women's Work Center as a platform for sustainable income-generating work for women through beadwork arts, sewing, capacity-building training, and soon delivery of their family's millk by electric motorcycle. When women make an income, they use it to uplift their families, including paying school fees to keep their kids in school. Day after day, we witness tremendous joy and self-confidence blossom in the women at our Work Center. We are also addressing family health challenges in the Mara community through clean water and sanitation facilities.

One of our underlying values is a healthy environment, and we incorporate that into all that we do. We curate libraries that include environmental learning materials, support tree planting, and use clean renewable energy in all our development projects.

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WHY RURAL MOROCCO?

In our legacy program in Morocco, well known in the country as Morocco Library Project (MLP), we continue to boost learners at rural schools and villages through libraries and support for English literacy. We found that the communities where we work, especially in Amazigh areas, had little or no access to learning and knowledge resources. Today, after 10 years of inspiring a culture of reading, our program in Morocco has evolved to a nationwide short story competition for rural youth, elevating voices previously unheard. This program is now expanding to young people in the U.S. and Kenya.

MLP was founded in 2014. Our earliest principles were to ignite literacy and a love of learning in underprivileged rural in collaboration with local teachers and to build a bridge of friendship between North Africa and the U.S. We are still doing this today.