Causes: Family Leadership, Community Change, Youth, Fatherhood
Simon Mbevi, Executive Director
Scroll to bottom of page to see an urgent COVID-19 message
We met Pastor Simon years ago at Mavuno Church in Nairobi. He now spends most of his time leading Transform Nations which has had significant community impact. One of the many things that is unique about his ministry is the majority of their operating funds are raised in country and they are not dependent on raising funds from the West for operations. Recipients pay a small fee for many of the services they provide, which we believe is a true testimony to the value the recipients place on these services. We greatly appreciate their focus on impacting men and improving their role as a husband, father and provider.
Our Mission
We at Transform Nations have been privileged to be in the frontlines of what God is doing today. Our mission is to equip leaders in the family, church and the marketplace to impact their area of influence for community/national transformation. Our vision is to see healthy families & changed communities.
Pastor Simon
Simon Mbevi is the Executive Director and founder of Transform Nations (formerly Transform Kenya). Simon’s drive to start up this organization in the year 2010 came from an absence of responsible masculine leadership in the Family, wholistic transformation through the Church and Christian influence in the Marketplace. He has been involved in seminars and global conferences aimed at equipping leaders who would spearhead societal change in the country and beyond.
His passion for ministry to men (having grown up fatherless), good leadership and prayer also played a part in the birth of Transform Nations. Since then, the organization has grown substantially, impacting thousands of lives through transformative oriented programs and content. Simon holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Law (University of Nairobi) and a Master of Arts in Leadership (Pan Africa Christian University). In addition to being the Founder and Executive Director of Transform Nations, Simon is also one of the founding Pastors of Mavuno Church, Kenya.
Our Programs
Our prayers are in line with three pillars, focusing on the family, leadership & community change. In line with these, we have witnessed in the last 9 years over 20,000 men graduate out of our Man Enough program (8-week journey for adult men), over 8,000 boys taken through mentoring, over 4,000 women trained in parenting and over 3,000 leaders in the marketplace equipped to impact their industry. Over 20,000 people have gone through our Prayer Adventure program and have been equipped in transformational prayer.
The stories of personal, family and even institutional transformation have been amazing.
We have worked with over 200 churches in East and Central Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, D. R. Congo). We have also partnered with a few churches in the U.S.A, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and the Caribbean to experience our programs.
Sustainability
To date, the bulk (over 95%) of our funding has come from program fees, local corporate trainings, sale of books and merchandise and local fundraising especially from program graduates. As we have sought to expand and meet the demand, the Transform Nations board has been keen on growing in sustainability.
One of the projects we set out to undertake in our 5-year strategic plan (2017-2021) is the Shujaa (Heroes) Base. This is a 20-acre retreat and team building/experiential learning facility. We envision a place outside of the city that would be ideal for families (especially men and boys who make the bulk of our trainees) and leaders to retreat for team building activities, experiential learning and fun.
This will help with sustainability in two ways:
It will plough back to the organization the close to 35% of our operational budget that is spend on our program retreats and camps;
It will raise revenue as we avail the center to churches, the corporates, groups and institutions for camps, retreats and team building activities.
Justification
All our programs have 1 or 2 retreats or outdoor events incorporated because we believe in experiential learning. We hope to increase our holiday or school break events with a huge target on the youth – given that Kenya’s mean age is only 19.
We hope to host most of our partnering churches, corporates, non-profits and institutions for the retreats and events as they go through TN programs.
Kenya lacks enough facilities like these to accommodate the growing demand of a young population to spend time out in experiential learning and fun activities. We, as an organization, have had sometimes to postpone events or book a smaller facility for 3 straight weekends for our retreats to accommodate our numbers.
Wins So Far
Land – We have now acquired the land through a local fundraising effort from the graduates of the program and donations from a few churches (2017& 2018). The cost of the land was 260,000 USD.
Phase 2 – We are in the process of fundraising for Phase 2, which includes fencing of the property, basic infrastructure (water & sewer systems, power and the access road), landscaping, basic team building elements, storage, kitchen and meeting rooms. (2019)
Team – We have a team of professionals who have committed to donate most of their time as their contribution to the project. All are beneficiaries of our programs. These architects, engineers, surveyors, project managers and contractors have drawn development plans and are willing to work with the contractors. These plans are currently undergoing final adjustments.
Accomplishments
We have inspired and worked with about 1500 youth leaders in mentoring sessions for over 8,000 youth both in schools and in communities
We have trained about 200 fathers on intentional fatherhood in rural communities with great stories of change
Today we graduate between 600 to 1,000 men from about 40 plus churches from the Man Enough program every 3 months, and there are up to 10 other churches that will do the graduation in their churches
We have started 2 corporate trainings for men in the few months, with Barclays bank (a Europe based bank that is quite large in Africa) and a telecom company. This will be a year-long training for men in the organization.
Projections
Our conservative revenue projections indicate that besides this Base enhancing our transformational programs, it is a viable capital project that would eventually be profitable.
Transformation Leadership
This pillar is touches on training leaders in servant and transformational leadership model. We believe that leadership plays a strategic role in community transformation. The programs under this pillar include:
The Marketplace program – this equips Christians with principles based on the book of Daniel to practice their faith at work and believe God for transformation of and through the marketplace.
The Kiongozi Challenge – this includes a campaign in schools, churches and the community on being 5C citizens and choosing 5C leaders (and holding them accountable thereafter). This is an attempt to challenge people to play their part and choose leaders based on competencies and not ethnicity – a reality that has sparked ethnic conflicts before. The 5Cs are Character, Competence, Compelling vision, Care & Conciliation.
Corporate Wellness Program – We have worked with some corporates to train on the 5C leadership model, servant leadership and Gender @ Work.
An urgent COVID-19 message from Simon Mbevi
Kenya, like many other nations has been hit by the Coronavirus. Currently we have more than 200 cases of infections and with a very limited health capacity, limited resources and not enough awareness, there are fears what a wide spread infection would do to the nation. TN felt compelled to respond by targeting one of the communities that we have worked with for the last 2 years.
Hygiene is one of the key methods of controlling the spread of COVID-19. The spread of the Coronavirus in Makueni (one of the 47 counties) is enhanced by its communal way of life. The people in the rural areas such as Makueni also lack firsthand information from medical and public health professionals creating room for misinformation and myths that could promote the spread of the virus. However, poverty is one key contributor to the spread of the virus as people who live on daily wages defy the government directives to stay home.
In the last two weeks, the government has encouraged people to stay at home. In the last few days we have a curfew running between 7 pm and 5 am. As we anticipate a complete shutdown by the government in the next weeks, many families are likely to go hungry as they halt their economic activities. Most people are casual laborers, paid daily after work.
We have in the last two weeks started talks with the community leaders and church leaders to prepare the community to combat the virus. But a lot more is yet to be done. We have launched a 5 week project through April into May with the objectives of:
Increased awareness of the virus and ways to minimize its spread
Train and equip 30 people as community health volunteers who will work with the local government medical officials to attend to the affected
Support communities with hand-washing stations and sanitizers
Support 300 poorest families with food packages to last them the month.
One mom who is a widow raising 4 children singlehandedly, is one of the beneficiaries. She sells food in construction sites which have since been closed. The children are between 5 and 16 and had been put on a food rationing plan. They are so thankful to God, to the local church and to TN for the rescue without which they would have spent days on very little. Her firstborn daughter, who is one of the daughters TN supports with high school tuition sponsorship program, was overwhelmed by joy.
Most families we have reached out are in desperate need at this time of limited travel and closed businesses. We have heard many transformational stories in this community as we have worked with the local churches to holistically impact this community in Makueni. More than half of the resources for this response have been raised from beneficiaries of our programs. We hope to extend the food packages should the situation persist beyond May.
To learn more about this ministry please visit their website by clicking the link or image below.
Transform Nations: http://transform-nations.net/
To Donate to this ministry: We are currently assisting this ministry to be set up in the U.S. to receive donations. If you would like to donate to this ministry, please fill out the Contact form on our Home page and let us know you are interested in donating to Transform Nations and we will get back to you with this information.
Comments