The Amazing Maasai Ultra marathon is the main fundraising program for the Amazing Maasai Girls Project, which provides high-school scholarships for girls from the Maasai community lands on which the 75km race is held. In 2011 $25,000 was raised, enough to provide 20 four-year scholarships. The aim for 2012 is to provide 30 more girls with places at school that will help them avoid childhood marriage & pregnancy, to let them find a job instead, transforming their futures & their families' lives.
Secondary school fees are an entirely unaffordable expense for the average Maasai family. For this reason, it is mostly boys who make it beyond primary school; girls meanwhile are often married as young as age 15. Without access to secondary school, even the brightest girls lose the chance to discover their own voices; they're unlikely to learn how to avoid pregnancy & HIV, they have no way to find jobs and no choice in the direction of their futures.
Four years of high school education is enough to transform the future of a Maasai girl from Laikipia North. In school, they will be more likely to avoid childhood marriage, developing instead the skills & self-confidence required to find a job and better support their families. The Amazing Maasai Ultra marathon is held to fund-raise to cover these future-changing school fees for bright, hardworking girls whose families could otherwise not afford them.
To educate a girl is to invest in her, her family and her community - education is an invaluable long-term investment with a wide-reaching impact. The Amazing Maasai Girls Project aims to help at least 20-30 Maasai girls every year into school so they take control of their own situations, and start improving the situations of their wider environment over the next 5-10 years.
