Guidance without Safety Nets

Two days into a part time job with Big Corporate, supporting high flying Kenyan students apply to universities in the States, and reflecting on how careers guidance is different here.


- there aren't publications to refer onto. No 'Now pick up a guide on CV writing and another on networking and don't come back till you've read them.'  We have one reference publication on US colleges, picked up by a colleague in Singapore airport. That's all.

- there aren't colleagues to refer onto either. No 'Now thats a tricky query, let me check with my colleague who specialises in that area.'  No other careers advisors in the whole country. Or not that I've yet met. We have a sparky team of Kenyans who themselves went to Ivy League colleges, - but its very different knowing what you yourself might write, and supporting another to hone their story.

- our clients are spread all over the country - we'd have to be very opportunistic to see them face to face - and most people can't afford access to the internet - at Big Corporate it's restricted to managers only - so information on the web is barely accessible.  We have one phone in our office, shared between four.

- the right to education, seamless transition, the European conveyer belt progression from one educational stage to the next, is not something to be taken for granted here.  One of the highflyers - top A level results in his district -  only got to progress to secondary school, which is always fee paying, by queuing and making representations to the District Education Officer, who personally underwrote his fees in an act of charity.  Others got top results despite school records which make it clear they missed terms here, and sat out years there, because family finances were going to get the older sibling through secondary school first.  Still others have references which show they taught all the classes to their peers a year below them for two terms, due to teacher absence.  What happened to their own classes while they were teaching others?

- Where middleranking UK universities might see outreach work as seeking out young people who are the first generation in university in their family, here this is an almost certainty. One lad writes of growing up in a village of mainly illiterate villagers.  Another of overcoming childhood kwashlikor, caused by malnutrition. A third of working as a street hawker to raise money for his siblings' school fees. One writes of growing up in a polygamous family, one of 27 children, with very little parental attention.

And yet, I'm seeing, in many ways, the job IS much the same - helping people identify and articulate what matters to them, who they are and have faith that this is acceptable. Helping them identify what they could contribute in a new setting, and how to communicate it convincingly.  Nurturing confidence in a setting where the pitfalls can be devastating.  Helping manage expectations and broaching fallback plans. But without the safety nets of 'This is the assumed knowledge'. 'This is how we do things here.' Just listening, responding, and reflecting back, - invaluable where many have had very little access to personal attention.  Trusting in the process. Trusting that supporting people to consider how they can get their questions answered from their own resources, help them imagine alternative scenarios and visions, and how they might feel in them, helping them learn to ask better questions for their lives, IS of use in this country where there are few safety nets and only handfuls have the security of trial runs.