Leadership Training for Girls in Rural Kenya

Hello from sunny Enoosaen! It's been a busy summer here, both for our Health and Leadership Training program and for our other core educational programs. In June, we held another weekend training at Poroko primary school in a nearby community. We had 373 participants, with 181 girls and 192 boys attending. This two-day training experience included sessions on self-defense, life skills such as assertiveness and boundary setting, reproductive health, sexual and gender-based violence, and other crucial subjects for young adolescents.

Since Kakenya's Dream focuses primarily on empowering and educating girls, we are often asked about why we include boys in our Health and Leadership Training program. It’s a good question, and it has an important answer. Boys and men are key to the work we do and the community-wide transformation we are trying to bring. From the beginning, we’ve worked with fathers and other men in the community to help them see the value in supporting girls, and we’ve continued to expand these opportunities.

At our co-ed weekend Health and Leadership Trainings, we provide both boys and girls with the information and skills they need to be healthy and happy. We cover everything from sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDs to basic hygiene. Boys learn about some of the challenges girls face, including female genital mutilation/cutting and stigma around menstruation, empowering them to become allies and advocates for change.

Through our programs, we are also building bridges between our girls and their fathers. In our community, fathers and daughters traditionally do not mix. Girls would be expected to go through their mother to ask their father’s permission for something, and even that is rare. We’re changing that at Kakenya's Dream. We invite fathers to be involved in their daughter's lives and to attend our annual Health and Leadership graduation celebrations. Through shared experiences, fathers and daughters get to know each other. One father recently transformed from protesting his daughter’s education to proudly escorting her to her first day of high school in Nairobi just a few years -- his first time to the city.

I hope you know just how important your support is in making this work possible. Thank you so much for helping us change lives of both girls AND boys in rural communities.

Links:

• Our Website

We are thrilled to share with you that last month, we held our largest ever week-long Health and Leadership training in Enoosaen. Six years ago, when we launched the first training at our school, the camp had 50 participants from just a handful of other schools in the surrounding region. At our April camp this spring, we had more than 300 girls in attendance, joining us from dozens of other schools. As these numbers show, our program continues to grow each year, transforming the lives of more and more girls who are at risk of female genital mutilation, early marriage, and school drop-out.

Our trainings are one-of-a-kind in the region where we operate. The girls we train have never experienced anything like the fun, energetic, empowering environment at Kakenya’s Dream camps. We are proud of many aspects of the training program, which each contribute to the camps’ effectiveness and success, such as older girls who attended trainings in the past serving as counselors for current participants, the powerful self defense training sessions that instill girls with confidence, and the camaraderie that develops among girls from different schools and villages.

During our camp last month, we were especially pleased to have grandmothers from the local Maasai community come to the camp one evening to tell traditional Maasai stories to the girls. While we are determined to end the practices that have hindered girls from thriving for centuries, we also celebrate the beautiful aspects of their culture and want the girls to feel connected to their communities, families, and one another. The storytelling evening was a heartwarming way for the girls to connect to their elders in the midst of a week of learning how to pave their own paths for their future.

Demand for Kakenya’s Dream trainings continues to grow as their reputation spreads across the Transmara region. Because of support from people like you who believe in our mission to empower and educate marginalized girls to improve their lives and their communities, we have been able to provide the training for more and more vulnerable girls. Thank you so much for your support!

Links:

• Our Website