Leadership Training for Girls in Rural Kenya

Greetings from Enoosean,

Kakenya Center for Excellence(KCE) staff are busy preparing for the upcoming Health and Leadership training this week! We look forward to sharing our successes and challenges with you soon! In the meantime, we would like to remind you of how important educating girls is to global development.

KCE uses a holistic education model as a national development tool. The United Nations released their goals for global sustainable development by 2030; listing 17 goals that every nation must reach in order to obtain sustainable development. Goal number four is to ensure inclusive and quality education for all and promote lifelong learning; including the equal access to education for girls.

Our health and leadership training uses an informal experiential learning approach to educate community members about the benefits of educating girls and the reasons to avoid harmful traditional practices of FGM and early forced marriage. The goal of our health and leadership training is to eradicate harmful cultural practices through community engagement. So far, we have educated 5,155 girls about their sexual and reproductive health and rights and 3,000 girls and boys from 55 neighboring schools have received transformative knowledge through our Health and Leadership Training.  One hundred percent of girls who have attended our boarding school have avoided the painful experience of FGM and early forced marriage.

KCE believes that a holistic education model is the most capable of achieving the United Nation’s goal number 4 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals; our Health and Leadership Training is an important part of this holistic approach to education.

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!