Gender Equality Kenya Project #25518

Girls LEAP in Kenya

by Creative Action Institute

Project Report | Jun 2, 2017
Students turn the tables on "Open Day"

By Julia DOrazio | Development & Communications Manager

Girls staging Forum Theater

**This is the final project report for Girls LEAP Kenya - we will keep you updated on the progress of the project's development as CAI continues to actively persue implementing partners. LEAP is inspired by the East African Girls' Leadership Program and Summit (EAGLS) - and when launched, will be driven by the girls of EAGLS and their mentors. You can continue to support the development of these interconnected programs here. In the meantime, we're excited to share this game-changing creative action for gender equality in Tanzania.Thank you so much for your support! **

SEGA is a residential secondary school for Tanzanian girls who otherwise are unable to attend school due to extreme poverty. SEGA’s mission is to provide a high-quality education that fosters strong values, self-esteem and critical thinking skills and to empower students as agents of change for themselves, their families and their communities.

SEGA is a partner of AMPLIFY – a cohort of community organizations working to promote gender equity in East Africa – including the EAGL program, the year-round leadership and social action program culminating in the annual East African Girls’ Leadership Summit in Kenya.

Armed with mini-grants from CAI, the girls of SEGA and their mentors have been hard at work, replicating EAGL trainings and applying creative techniques they’ve learned to stage community actions promoting respect for girls’ human rights.

OPEN DAY
In Tanzania, 4 out of 10 girls are married before their 18th birthday. Child marriage is deeply embedded in society and girls are generally considered ready for marriage at only 10-15 years old. The practice is often viewed as a move for financial security and a way to prevent loss of family honor due to pre-marital sex and pregnancy. Child marriage limits girls’ life opportunities and severely undermines their ability and confidence to make informed decisions about their lives.

Traditionally, “Open Day” is a cultural practice where girls who are considered to be of marriageable age are openly “presented” to the community to signal their status as potential wives and that the parents are ready to receive marriage proposals. Once the girl is “seen,” it’s nearly impossible to “undo” her status as a potential wife. This time, the students of SEGA had other ideas, successfully reframing the story of Open Day as an opportunity to engage more than 100 parents, teachers and members of the media about the many negative effects of early marriage for girls and to advocate for their right to continue their education.

SINGING OUT
Students lifted their voices in unison, calling upon respect for sisters, mothers and daughters, calling upon the chance to determine their own future, calling upon their recognition, not as a burden, but a blessing. This song was also performed on International Women’s Day in another community action.

ACTING OUT
Forum theater entails the dramatization of specific scenarios (for example, a father instructs his daughter that he has received her dowry and must be married). The action is halted at critical turning points, and the audience actively engages in identifying various possible solutions to the situation. Students applied this creative method on Open Day to illustrate in an interactive way the dehumanizing consequences of inequality.

PEERS MENTORING PEERS
An essential element of the EAGL program is the training of women partner staff in creative mentoring and facilitation techniques grounded in the CAI curriculum designed to address the unique needs of adolescent girls. SEGA students are applying the EAGL mentoring component to support each other in a peer mentoring program. Form 3 students have completed three days of training in how to effectively mentor and support younger students. Mentors select a topic to discuss during weekly meetings with their younger sisters to check in and provide guidance.

Entrepreneurship is a valuable life skill for SEGA students, as many Tanzanians supplement their salaries with small businesses. Income generating activities can be especially beneficial for girls to develop independence and for parents to understand the practical values of an education. Among the many ways SEGA fosters these skills is a Business Club - where students learn to generate and create products such as food items, clothes and textiles and engage in small scale marketing at school and in the wider community. In addition to helping younger students navigate through their school journey, peer mentoring is also supporting the development of these practical skills.

All of us at CAI are heartened and inspired to witness the enthusiasm for creative social action embraced by SEGA students and their mentors and the endless possibilities for knowledge transfer and replication beyond schools and into the wider communities and regions of Tanzania. With your help, girls in East Africa can light up their communities with truth and action to empower themselves and influence hearts, minds and policy.

SEGA Mentors

The community gathers.

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Feb 3, 2017
The Dreams of a Girl

By Aryeh Shell | Education & Training Director

What a Girl Wants: leadership

It has been said about social change: “If we can’t dream it, we can’t build it." Some of our great world leaders have spoken about the power of dreams. The indigenous Guatemalan activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchu, once said: “What I treasure most in life is being able to dream. During my most difficult moments and complex situations I have been able to dream of a more beautiful future.” Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King is recognized globally for his vision, courageous actions and famous speech that started with “I have a dream…”

Our power to create a better world is dependent upon our ability to dream into and envision what we really want for ourselves and our communities. We all have the ability to dream and create, but sometimes along the way we stop believing in what is possible and began to accept the status quo. Perhaps we’ve been told, like so many young girls, that our dreams don’t matter or that we don’t have the intelligence or strength or power to make a difference. Sometimes, trauma or structural violence diminishes our capacity to imagine that another world is possible.

At the annual 2016 East African Girls' Leadership Summit (EAGLS) in December, 35 girls and 15 women staff of partner organizations training as mentors gathered over the course of five days from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda to dream their collective future together. Still in the planning stages, the LEAP Project will build upon the success of EAGLS in cultivating girls as advocates of girls' human rights and equipping women from partner organizations to lead them in their journey.

Our work with girls in East Africa is to heal and unlearn these messages, and to plant the seeds of their dreams into the soil of love. We teach the girls that as leaders, it's important to affirm themselves and each other. They learn self-care practices to reconnect with their spirit and manage their emotions. They told themselves: “I matter!” “I am important!” “I can!” They told each other: “I see the leader in you!” They transcribed their dreams into blossoms and claimed them out loud. They exclaimed their desires to become doctors, lawyers, engineers and artists; to end gender-based violence; to be safe, recognized and respected in their communities.

Participants were introduced to The Girl Declaration, the outcome of a collaboration between development experts and 508 adolescent girls living in poverty to understand their dreams, needs and concerns. The Declaration is a call to action placing global investment in girls at the heart of the post-2015 development agenda. We worked in small groups to develop theater skits illustrating the five primary Declaration goals: Education, Safety, Economic Security, Health and Citizenship. Together they explored potential obstacles, ways to address them and their own personal commitments to achieve each goal within their own communities with creative action. Together, they supported each other in concrete plans to turn these dreams into reality.

Women are at the center of family and community life. If they are allowed to dream big and are provided the education, resources and support to achieve those dreams, these girls can lift up entire societies.

With your help, LEAP will build upon the success of EAGLS by:

Developing a cohort of mentors as master trainers, facilitating the integration of new methods in 44 partner schools across 4 countries, reaching an estimated 11,000 disadvantaged young women per year.
The initiation of Girls LEAP clubs that challenge social norms and reach out-of-school girls, parents, and community members.
Supporting newly enrolled girls to stay in school through enhanced, girl-centered cirriculum and LEAP clubs.

In the meantime, the girls and their mentors return to their respective countries to share what they have learned, connected to a powerful network of Urumuri Dadas – Sisters who Light Up the World.

We at CAI are excited to be a part of this movement and support them on their journey of leadership and creative social action! May the dreams of every girl be given the conditions they need to fully bloom and thrive.

What a Girl Wants: and end to early marriage

Leadership Tree

Girls meet with mentors, Dec 2016, Kenya

Ruth & Pauline in mentor training, Dec 2016

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