Keep Maasai Girls Learning in Kenya

“When the sun is shining, I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.” — Wilma Rudolph

As we write these words it is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. We are thinking of Wilma's Rudolph's words because while the sun has been shining often in our part of the world, it has not been in so many others. And sometimes the mountains have been too high and many troubles too difficult to overcome for too many people around the world.

In Kenya, the rains are finally subsiding. While our staff and interns have been able to return to doing their outreach and enrollment work and we're excited about the positive impact that reinitiating our reproductive health education and reusable pad kits distribution program will have on girls' access to education in southern Kenya, we remain cognizant that much of Kenya is still recovering from the devastating spring floods. A June 19 report by ReliefWeb reports that over 306,520 Kenyans (61,304 families) were affected by heavy rains and floods between March 1 and June 18, with more than 293,200 people displaced. Eighty-one displacement sites in counties affected by floods were still active and supporting 54,000 people, and an estimated 350,000 learners remained out of school due to flooding and lack of school meals, since schools resumed on May 13, 2024.

Development work often feels like one step forward and three steps back, and perhaps never more so for us than this past year, as we watched so many people struggle across Kenya. Yet we remain ever hopeful that, together, with the resilient girls, families, and communities we work with, we can and will overcome each mountain or struggle that presents itself. Wilma Rudolph, quoted at the beginning of this email, was born in 1940 and contracted polio when she was five years old. Her diagnosis was bleak. "My doctors told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother," said Rudolph, in a well known quote. Wilma survived but lost strength in her left leg, which left her physically disabled and wearing a leg brace until she was twelve. Because there was little medical care available to African Americans in the Tennessee town she lived in at the time, she took weekly trips to Nashville with her mother for treatment to recover her leg strength, and her family also massaged her leg several times a day at home. She began playing basketball in high school, where a college track coach spotted her natural speed when she was 14 and invited her to start training. Two years later, in 1956, she went to her first Olympics. Four years later, in 1960, she became the first American woman to win three gold medals in a single Olympics, winning the 100-meter and 200-meter dash and anchoring the gold winning U.S. Women's 4 × 100-meter relay team, breaking three world records along the way. She became known as "The Fastest Woman on Earth."

Stories like Wilma Rudolph's, and like those of so many of our staff and the girls we work on behalf of, inspire us to keep going, even when the sun is not shining and the mountain seems impossibly high. They also remind us that healing happens in community, with others, whether it's recovery at the individual level, recovery for an entire village, or the restoration of an ecosystem. Sara Johnson, one of the many individuals in our own community of loyal and wonderful supporters, and also a mother who is currently, along with her husband Ryan, wrapping up an around-the-world trip with their three children, recently wrote to us about the experiences they had while visiting one of our partner schools in Kenya and staying with us at the wonderful Olkeroi Camp in the Loita Hills.

"It was important for us to bring our kids to the more rural, out-of-the-way places because we feel there's an authenticity to those places that allows for growth and empathy," she wrote. "There's usually an element in poverty that always ignites a spark to help and serve in the kids, which I love. I also think it's important that in those places, people generally value community and family very heavily, and their happiness is gauged more by the quality of their relationships than by the quantity of their belongings. We've taken our kids to some difficult places to travel that put them far outside their comfort zones, but they gained so much by being treated respectfully and included by those communities. They saw genuine care and concern for people, and that lesson has been so valuable."

The same sun shines on all of us. When we come together in genuine empathy and reach across artificially constructed differences and borders to help each other, most troubles can be overcome. Thank you for being part of the global community that reaches out to make life better for countless girls across the world whose mountains are often much higher to climb than our own. You can read more about the impact you helped make in their lives last year in our 2023 Annual Report through the link below.

Asante sana, from all of us at For the Good.

Photo: Sara Pavone Johnston

Links:

• Our 2023 Annual Report

RAINS IN KENYA
Many of you may have read about the devastating floods that have affected Kenya since November. Because the transportation infrastructure of the Loita Hills and Naikarra regions where we work consists of dirt roads that cross many rivers without bridges, the resultant flooding has made travel nearly impossible. This makes it extremely difficult for our staff to meet with community members or for our new Team Angaza interns to go out in the field to identify and enroll out-of-school children. Our Intern Coordinator, Christine Mpoe, has slept and waited by flooded rivers until nearly 2 AM in the morning until they have become safe enough to cross in order to meet with community leaders and help us continue to make forward progress on new schools. Our Programs Manager, Josephat Mashati, and Schools Coordinator, Rebecca Ledidi, have managed to do the same. Their intrepid commitment and dedication through many challenges has allowed us to make much of the progress outlined below.

GROWING OUR TEAM ANGAZA
We began expanding our group of Team Angaza interns last October. Three of our new interns were brought on to meet gaps we have identified in the Loita Hills –– small pocket regions where we are seeing lower primary enrollment than expected. The other four interns have just undergone their first training and are now beginning to identify and enroll children into over 30 different public primary and ECD schools across Olderkesi and Nakairra, two adjoining regions we began expanding to towards the end of 2023. In the more remote areas there, families live in isolated homesteads and often, have had little exposure to formal education or to an understanding of the ways it can benefit their children and communities. Traditional practices of FGC and early marriage also remain high. We expect our work here to be a journey in which we will be learning and building upon local families and communities’ strengths to empower them to move from the known –– what they already know and do well –– to the unknown of new ideas and information about education and health. We will both be learning and look forward to the opportunity to be able to make a significant impact in this historically underserved region.

MORE NEW HIGH SCHOOLS AND CLASSROOMS!
Just before the severe rains hit southern Kenya, we were able to celebrate the opening of several new classrooms at a third new day secondary school. The communities of Enairebuk and Olorte began fundraising for the first classrooms of their new school in August, 2023. By the following month, they had collectively sold enough goats and sheep to reach their fundraising goal, which we then matched 100%. The community used the collective funds to build the first two classrooms of the new Enairebuk Day Secondary School in September and held a public ceremony to celebrate their completion at the end of October. Nearly 1000 people attended, dressed in their finest Maasai jewelry and shukas. The first cohort of students began studying in these classrooms when the new school term began several weeks ago, and nearly 40 are now enrolled.

Each of our new secondary schools in Kenya are the result of 50-50% partnerships we create with existing primary schools and local communities: The community sets a goal to collectively fundraise for, and then we match their efforts 100%, offering additional support to communities experiencing extra hardships. 

OUR GRATITUDE:
Our ability to match the hard work of these communities is truly only possible thanks to the generosity of you, the people who support our work. Thank you for being part of the global community that makes these schools possible through your generosity and caring. We always wish we could transport each and every one of you to Kenya so you could experience for yourself the difference your caring has made in countless lives. Since that isn’t possible, we are sharing a small album of photos from our recent trip through the link below. Asante sana, as always, from the bottom of our hearts for helping us change the trajectory of so many young lives across the globe.

*Names used in this update are of our staff or beneficiaries with consent from all
 

Links:

• Photographs from our recent trip to Kenya in autumn, 2023.