Gender Equality Kenya Project #31852

Empower & Educate the Girls of Rural Kisumu

by The Rahul Kotak Foundation

Project Report | Nov 20, 2023
Turning Novelties into Norms

By Muskan Singh | Reporting Team

All smiles! Snippet from the workshop

Annually, the 11th of October is marked on the calendar to celebrate and unite the world to advocate for girls’ rights. Through this year’s theme “Invest in Girls Right: Our Leadership, Our Well-being”, UNICEF “envisions a world where girls have space to shape government policy and spending to inform the rules and norms by which businesses should operate, and to direct the priorities for new research and innovations. These examples should not be novelties, but the norm.”

For many girls in Kenya, not having access to education is a huge barrier to fulfilling this vision. In Kenya, primary education has been made free since 2003, but the financial burden for many families doesn't end there. While tuition is covered, parents and guardians are still responsible for expenses such as uniforms, books, stationery, and other educational materials.

Secondary education presents a more significant challenge, as it not only entails the same costs but also includes school fees. Considering that the average daily wage for two-thirds of Kenyans is less than KES. 500/- or $3.20/- per day, these additional expenses become a substantial burden. Families, especially those in marginalized communities, often find it difficult to cover these costs alongside their basic household expenses, including food, rent, and medical bills. Consequently, many girls are forced to drop out due to lack of funds further perpetuating the cycle of poverty. Moreover, the issue is compounded by the lack of access to basic menstrual products.A study in Kenya found that 95% of menstruating girls miss one to three school days each cycle, and more than half say they fall behind as a result.

At RKF, we firmly believe that access to quality education is not just a goal but a fundamental right and a key driver for the empowerment of girls. Through our Girls Project, we are actively supporting girls in their educational journey helping them break down some of the barriers that often impede their progress. By providing reusable sanitary pad kits through the Girls’ Empowerment Workshops, we not only address the menstrual health needs of girls but also provide crucial education on hygiene and self-care, empowering girls to manage their well-being effectively. Furthermore, secondary education is a crucial stepping stone in a girl's path toward empowerment and leadership. Acknowledging the financial challenges that many families face, we are now supporting young girls through our Scholarship Fund to continue on their educational journey so they can have the chance to become leaders and change-makers and by doing so, turn novelties like access to education into norms.

Since our last report, we have supported an additional 26 beneficiaries, 13 of whom are teenage girls who received a Sanitary Pad Kit that consists re-usable pads, soap, panties, toilet paper, a girl talk booklet and a bucket. We are also supporting another young girl to complete her education; Whitney was abandoned as a young child by her mother and was left in the care of her grandmother. RKF had supported Whitney during the pandemic with a Sanitary Pad Kit. In December last year she completed her KCPE from a public school in Kisumu with a score of 317 marks. Earlier this year we learnt from her former class teacher that she had been moved out of Kisumu to a rural school in the care of her extended family after her grandmother could no longer cover the expenses of looking after her. Unfortunately Whitney’s performance dropped and her guardians asked her to drop out of school as they could not afford to feed her either. When she came back to Kisumu, we were able to get her admission into a Secondary School through our Scholarship Program.

To read our last report where we shared detailed updates from our Workshops and Scholarship Program, you can click here: Update from our Girls Empowerment Workshops - 2023.

Giving Tuesday is coming up…

Giving Tuesday is on the 28th of November this year! A celebration of kindness and community that inspires the world to give back to their favourite causes. This year GlobalGiving is giving away $1.2 million in matching funds!!! The more you give, the more we receive in matching.

From all the million reasons to get matched this Giving Tuesday, you can pledge your donations to support young girls from marginalized communities to stay in school and complete their education.

Mum and Daughter during workshop

In conversation...

Beneficiary of the Sanitary Kits

Giving Tuesday 2023

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Aug 25, 2023
Update from our Girls Empowerment Workshops - 2023

By Mansi Kotak | Co-Founder & CEO

Empowered girls and empowered mums!

Dear Donor,

Greetings from warm and sunny Kisumu.

Thank you for your continued support to our project! In our last report we shared with you the work we started with the first cohort of Junior Secondary Students of Central Primary School, the selection of two former beneficiaries of the program into the Scholarship Program and RKF’s GlobalGiving Badges. You can read that full report here: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/empower-and-educate-the-girls-of-rural-kisumu/reports/?subid=204049.

In this report we share an update from our scholars Mary and Naomi as promised in the last report. We will also provide an update of the continued work we are doing with the girls of Central Primary School in Nyalenda and the impact of the Meals Program for mums in the current environment of economic distress in Kenya.

Scholars’ Update

In our last report we shared the launch of the new Scholarship Fund created to support students’ transition from primary to secondary school.

We held our first Scholars’ Workshop during the term school break. During the intensive workshop, all the scholars shared their experience of their first term in high school. Through the workshop we were able to provide the scholars with training on setting SMART goals, intention setting and time management to help them with the challenges of transitioning from primary to secondary school. This was followed by a team work challenge designed to help them build their collaborative working skills. In this challenge, they built a 3D model of the Sydney Opera House in less than 1 hour.

Two of our scholars this year are past beneficiaries of the Sanitary Pads Program and had previously attended the Girls Empowerment Workshops. Mary and Naomi are both doing really well at their respective schools and are using the training they received during past Girls Empowerment Workshop to care for themselves while at school.

Girls Empowerment Workshops

The core aspect of this project is to empower girls with Sanitary Pad kits whilst ensuring they (and their mothers) receive high quality menstrual health and hygiene training. We continue to reach even more girls with this program. Since our last update we have reached an additional 158 beneficiaries of this program, 79 of whom are students of Junior Secondary School who have received a Sanitary Pad kit which consists of re-usable pads, soap, panties, toilet paper, a girl talk booklet and a bucket.

Impact of the Meals Program

Since our last update in April 2023, we have served an additional 41,200 meals and crossed the milestone of serving 700,000 meals since we started this program back in 2016. You can read the full report for this on the Main project page by clicking here: https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/give-hope-to-kisumus-underprivileged-children/reports/#menu

All mothers and female guardians who attended the Girls Empowerment Workshops also received small food packs to support their families in a time when food prices have shot up quite drastically.

Gratitude Network Fellowship

Earlier this month, the Rahul Kotak Foundation (RKF) and its Co-Founder and CEO Mansi Kotak were selected as a 2023 Gratitude Network Fellow out of over 1,500 applicants. The fellowship is a year-long program that will help RKF scale up its work to be able to reach even more students living in marginalized communities.

Naomi

Mary

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Apr 22, 2023
More Empowered Girls, new Scholars and 6 Badges!

By Mansi Kotak | Co-Founder and CEO

Empowered Girls!

Dear Donor,

Greetings from rainy Kisumu!

Thank you so much for your continued support to our project! In our last report we shared an update from the work we started in Seme Sub County. In this report we share an update from our continued Girls’ Empowerment workshops within Nyalenda, especially with the girls and mums of Central Primary School’s first every Junior Secondary Cohort. We also provide an update about our girl scholars for 2023.

Workshops for Girls and Mums

Since December 2022, we have continued to provide re-usable sanitary pad kits and menstrual health and management training through our Girls’ Empowerment Workshops to 54 new students. Through these workshops, we engaged the students of Central Primary’s first cohort of Junior Secondary and their mothers in talks about the importance of self-care, menstrual hygiene, basic sex education and teenage pregnancies.

These discussions led to some insights from our beneficiaries. One such insight came from Marion who shared with us that she felt empowered to teach her sisters and friends about what she learnt at the workshop so that they could also benefit from all the information she received. Many mothers echoed her sentiments and shared feedback with our team to consider widening the circle of beneficiaries to reach more girls and women from their respective communities.

Another insight came from a beneficiary who wishes to remain anonymous: she shared that she really felt empowered to stand up and say NO to anyone who made any uncomfortable contact with her. She said she learnt for the first time how important it was to stand up for herself and her friends.

Each girl who attended the workshops received a re-usable sanitary kit that will last them12-18 months and contains: a Girl Talk booklet, a bucket, 5 re-usable sanitary pads, 2 panties, 2 toilet rolls and 1kg of soap. Each kit costs ~$10 and will help girls and their mothers save money every month from having to buy disposable pads. Each re-usable Sanitary Kit is the equivalent of 200 disposable pads.

Scholarships for two girls who are beneficiaries of this program

When we started our organization in 2016, our focus was to ensure students could access early education so that they were set up for a strong academic journey. Over the years, we have learnt of the various obstacles that many students living in marginalized communities face. One of the biggest obstacles is school fees to attend a good secondary school (preferably boarding) after completing their primary level education. After a lot of ground work over the past year, this year we were able to launch the Scholarship Fund with the support of some private donors and your donations to support 4 students for the next four years of their secondary school education. We are so excited for their futures and the impact of this program.

Two past beneficiaries of the Girls’ Empowerment Program and re-usable Sanitary Kits, Mary and Naomi, were recipients of the scholarships. They both finished their KCPE exams in December and we were able to give them the necessary support to continue with their secondary school education early this year. We are really excited to catch up with them in May and share an update on how they’re faring at their respective new schools.

GlobalGiving Badges

Every year, GlobalGiving awards different badges to non-profits on its platform. These badges are trust indicators that give you, the donor, an insight into how our non-profit is performing and being perceived on the platform. We are thrilled to share that for the 4th year in a row, we are one of a select few organizations that has received all six badges on offer by GlobalGiving.

These badges are awarded to non-profits to recognize their efforts in different areas. RKF has received badges for being a top-ranked, highly effective and vetted organization. We are also site-visit verified which means a member of the GlobalGiving team has visited our projects and verified the work we are doing. We were also selected as a Staff Favourite and Project of the Month!

Our speaker, Christine, doing a demo.

From the workshop

Christine and Anne, our incredible speakers!

GlobalGiving Bagdes 2023

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