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MISSION
Our mission is to provide slum communities with access to life-improving products through a sales network of trained youth and women.
HISTORY
We are a not-for-profit social enterprise founded in 2011 that creates jobs for youth and women in Kenyan slums through the distribution of life-improving products.
Though we began with a line of solar lamps, our product basket has expanded to include affordable, high quality, and eco-friendly products not otherwise readily available in slums, including, but not limited to, clean-burning cookstoves, solar products, reading glasses, and household appliances.
We have grown from two staff and seven trainees in one slum community, to a team of over 20 full-time staff, managing a national network of more than 120 sales agents in over a dozen branches covering the major towns and cities in Kenya.
LivelyHoods is registered as a 501(c)3 non-profit in the U.S., and we operate in Kenya as LivelyHoods Kenya. From 2011 to 2016, we operated under the name iSmart Kenya.
Check out our dynamic branch map to see where we are and how we’re growing.
Branch Managers
Each local branch has a branch manager, responsible for coordinating training and sales in their branch, and providing daily support to to the sales agents in their community. The majority of our branch managers started as sales agent, and live in the area they manage, giving them a personal link to the people they work with, and an intimate knowledge of the area.
Trainers
Our group of experienced trainers implements the LivelyHoods curriculum across each of our branches, regularly onboarding new cohorts of trainees across the country. They travel between branches, providing theory-based training and field support to aspiring sales agents, and guiding them through their first sales.
SALES AGENTS
All our sales agents are unemployed young people and women from slums who have not had the resources or academic success to pursue further education, start a business, or access the formal job market. We hire for talent and train for skills, meaning that we do not reject trainees based on academic success or experience.
We not only train them to improve their sales skills and provide jobs, but we also provide the tools and support to fulfill newly discovered ambitions in youth who have never before had an opportunity to learn and grow.