Macheo promotes character development of its students through talks given at the beginning of every session and on the last Saturday of every month where the mentors get time to spend with their mentees and share. These talks provide them with a good understanding of social and moral virtues. Macheo promotes the development of its students into young men and women of upright character, conduct and high ideals such as service, generosity, commitment, truth, courage and responsibility.
Among the character talk topics we have had in the past sessions are cheerfulness, honesty, friendship, loyalty, enthusiasm, hard work, industriousness, time management, respecting authority, respecting others, courage, perseverance, discipline, self-control, responsible friendships among other topics.
Macheo mentor-mentee relationship has transformed the lives of the secondary students’ not through spectacular measures but through small repeated acts of instruction, guidance and encouragement from the mentors and tutors enriching their lives and forging a bond between Kenya’s top academic minds and Nairobi’s most underserved youth.
The mentoring sessions aim at forging good attitudes towards learning, provide good role models for the mentees and to assist them to develop good study habits. The character development equips the secondary students with the necessary skills to adapt and deal with the challenges of living in the slum given its difficult environment.
Each mentor is assigned between 1 and 4 mentees whom he/ she talks to on a one-on-one basis after each Macheo session. Male students are paired with male mentors while female students are assigned to female mentors. Peer mentoring is effective with young people who easily identify with each other and hence aid each other to go through their youth years responsibly.