The Girl's Empowerment Project

Summary

The Girl's’ Empowerment Project is a safe space where adolescent girls regain their physical and mental health, create a network of peer support and achieve skills which lead to self-sufficiency. project reportread updates from the field

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Received $19,389 from 199 donations from people like:

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More Information About this Project

Project Needs and Beneficiaries

Unaccompanied adolescent girls ages 13-19 in forced displacement, especially in urban areas such as Nairobi, are at particular risk of neglect, exploitation and abuse. Without guardians to protect them and an absence of fundamental services, such as health care and education, a desperate need exists to provide them with effective tools that protect them from rape, forced marriage, prostitution, discrimination, at-risk pregnancies, slavery and HIV/AIDS.

Activities

In addition to case management services, including provisions for health care, all participants engage in a series of four program components: basic education, life skills disucssion, job skills training and income generation.

Funding Information

Total Funding Received to Date: $19,389
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $30,611
Total Funding Goal: $50,000

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).

Resources

Why this Project is Important

Potential Long Term Impact

Creates opportunities for girls to become confident and self-sufficient community leaders. Their participation creates a shift in poverty toward a life of rebuilding and belonging.

Project Message

"These girls believe that their futures stopped when they fled their countries - they felt that they had nothing to live for. Heshima Kenya is providing them with hope."
- Zahra, Refugee Mother

Who is Running This Project

Contact

Anne Sweeney
Co-Executive
PO Box 408077
Chicago, IL 60640
United States
(312) 714-4038
Email:

Project Sponsor

Emily Pierce

Organization

Heshima Kenya Logo

Heshima Kenya
P.O. Box 408077
Chicago, IL 60640
United States
(312) 714-4038
http://www.heshimakenya.org

Heshima Kenya's Current Projects on GlobalGiving

The Safe House: An Enclave of Peace and Hope
The Safe House: An Enclave of Peace and Hope

Where this Project is Located

Country

This project is located in KenyaKenya and can also be found under Women and GirlsWomen and Girls.

For more information about Kenya, read the Human Development Report on Kenya or the Wikipedia entry for Kenya.

When this Project was Updated

Last Updated

This project was last updated on March 3, 2010.

Date Added to GlobalGiving

This project was added to the GlobalGiving project catalog on April 10, 2008

Latest Update from the Field

A Volunteer's Perspective..

By Anne Sweeney - Co-Executive Director, November 13, 2009 01:07 PM

As we continue to build our Girl's Empowerment Project, we like share our impact through the eyes of our volunteers. Joe Steele has been passionately working with Heshima Kenya for the past four months:

I had been in Nairobi for 85 minutes when Amina laid the groundwork for what has been a humbling, inspiring lesson in strength and perseverance. I’m a NYC public school teacher come international non-profit volunteer searching for an understanding of the issues facing our world. I found it in Amina, an Ethiopian refugee, who participates in Heshima Kenya's Girl's Empowerment Project.

Amina's story and struggle—flight, abandonment, exploitation, violence—is one that the HK staff have taken on with incredible passion. At HK, a safe house provides the security, structure and consistency that allows each girl to focus on their future, an education program that gives them the tools to define and defend their rights and pursuits and a tailoring and dying course that harnesses the unquestionable skill, drive and dedication that each girl possesses.

But Amina is relentlessly hard on herself for her past and present struggles. She carries the burden of those experiences and the responsibilities of raising two young children in every classroom lesson, every trip to the UNHCR and each beautiful scarf she labors to create. I began to understand in my first few hours here in Kenya the entrenching psychological effects that an unequal and indifferent social system creates—crying, stupid, useless—but also witnessed firsthand efforts to heal those wounds. Each day Amina and the other girls are given the tools they need to control their futures, even if they can’t control their pasts. Each day they help a group of our society’s most vulnerable girls wake up in a safe place, learn skills that demand both respect and recognition and show them that their dreams have value.

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