A TOP center is a training center where people can come and learn, acquire skills around some specific areas such as green walls, food upcycling, solving water pollution with bio-sand filters, medicinal herbs, technology such as maker’s rooms and more.
There are now 11 TOP centers in Kenya:
- to be completed
TOP is made of TOP centers spread around the country gathering challenges, developing their own solutions (simple & complex) and spreading TOP solutions that were developed in other TOP centers or found elsewhere. A TOP center is an attraction point: it attracts people, SMEs around, to learn new techniques (e.g. green-wall) or buy some products developed by the TOP center (e.g. Justus, farmer, is making a living selling organic plants in the tea plantations area). It creates circles of influence. The TOP center are either a very small business (e.g. woman from Bomet area who set up a dairy factory) or an organization such as a school (e.g. Hospital Hill School in Nairobi), or for instance the church in Gatanga (where Sebastian of YARD is active).
TOP centers provide a platform for:
● Developing & spreading simple solutions (e.g. green-walls)
● Developing start-ups based upon medium/complex solutions, with the support of TOP experts.