Leadership Training for Girls in Rural Kenya

Greetings from Enoosean:

Our Health and Leadership Trainings change lives. On June 25^th, Kakenya Center for Excellence completed another successful Health and Leadership Training, adding another 358 youth to the more than 3,500 young people our trainings have already empowered through education. Our efforts to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM) and early marriage through community engagement brings together students from neighboring schools and communities to discuss issues affecting girls’ education and health. This Health and Leadership Training was hosted by Olalui Primary School and brought together 173 teen girls and 185 teen boys from four nearby schools.

The two-day training was lead by members of I Am Worth Defending, a comprehensive sexual assault prevention organization for adolescents. Sessions were specially designed for the girls and boys based on their gender-specific training needs. The girls’ targeted training consisted of sex education courses that discussed adolescent sex and reproductive health.Girls were introduced to self-defense strategies and gender equality philosophies, empowering them to be assertive and set boundaries when interacting with their male counterparts.

The boys’ training aimed to create awareness and responsibility for the unique challenges facing girls. Their activities sought to challenge unequal power relations between males and females through the adoption of core rules and life skills geared towards behavior change. The guidelines challenged the participants through discussions and activities to trade harmful masculine practices for positive practices in favor of a gender-just society.

The goal of our Health and Leadership Training is to educate and engage the community in a conversation about violence against girls and women. Our hope is that the information received during training is transferred to the broader community. We assess our results through the personal successes of our students. These trainings express to all youth attending and the wider community that girls’ health and education matters while providing girls and boys with the knowledge and tools they need to combat gender-based violence.

Every aspect of these vital trainings is made possible by the generosity of donors, both large and small. Without the support of GlobalGiving, we would not be able to provide these services to the thousands of youth and their communities we serve in rural Kenya. Thanks to your continued involvement, our program will positively impact even more adolescents this coming year. Thank you! 

Greetings from Enoosaen!

I am excited to tell you about our most recent health and leadership camp, held this past April during school holidays. Now in its 6th year, the program has not only earned a solid reputation among neighboring school leaders, but it is also highly sought after by the teens themselves.

Each participating school sent three 6^th grade students for the week of training, which, in addition to our 6th graders, brought our total number of participants to nearly 150. The size and duration of the camp requires us to prepare for the camp several weeks in advance and to hire extra cooks, guards, matrons, educators and counselors to facilitate. I’m grateful to the “behind the scenes” team who dedicated many hours ordering food and preparing for the opening day!

Our counselors arrived before camp began for a day of training. Most of our counselors are current high school students that have graduated from our boarding school and have personal experience with both our health and leadership camps and our health and leadership boarding school curriculum. These counselors are on the front lines with the campers, helping them navigate our campus, facilitating reflection time and spearheading games and events during downtime. I love watching the counselors take these young campers under their wings and create a supportive bond.

As always, we covered tough issues in our training sessions. Topics ranged from harassment and gender-based violence to legal rights on child marriage and FGM. We know that girls armed with accurate information about their bodies and sexual health will be better prepared to make safe and informed decisions in the future, so we have worked hard to create a health education program that is direct and straightforward. Our campers benefited from smaller group and individual counseling sessions that provided them with the safe space to voice their feelings, questions and concerns. This open communication allowed girls to seek help for some of the serious problems they are facing and for us to gauge the greatest needs of adolescent girls in the community.

Of course, camp also included down time for the girls to let loose and have fun with their peers. Soccer, races, games, storytelling and art projects were just some of the highlights.These camps are one of the most exciting, effective, and fun elements of our program, and we are so grateful for the supporters who partner with us to allow them to continue. Thank you for enabling us to spread our hopeful messages and important health and leadership information to girls who do not usually have access to such information.