Leadership Training for Girls in Rural Kenya

Kakenya's Dream's Health and Leadership Training program has grown exponentially since it first launched in 2011. With your help, we have been able to train over 8,000 girls and boys across rural Kenya. These young people live in communities where basic knowledge about their bodies and rights is often distorted or unavailable. Thanks to people like you who believe in our mission, we are changing the lives of these adolescents by empowering them with information and skills to make informed decisions that will shape their futures.

Demand for our program continues to outpace our capacity. As we reported to you earlier this year, in April 2017, we held our largest weeklong camp to date with over 300 attendees from more than 50 schools in our region -- and we still could not accommodate every girl who wished to attend. We desire to reach each and every vulnerable adolescent in the region, and we are excited to announce our plans to scale up the training program over the coming years.

First, we will capture our unique curriculum to launch a “train-the-trainers” feature, which will reach hundreds of teachers from local schools. These instructors will be trained in delivering our Health and Leadership modules, growing capacity within the community to reach and teach even more young people. 

Second, we are opening a year-round health clinic, which all young men and women in the neighboring communities can access for health testing and treatment without stigmatization.

Finally, we are increasing the number of workshops we hold each year to educate 7,000 youth annually—nearly doubling our current reach—and train an additional 300 “peer trainers” to present the curriculum across the region. Together, these two approaches will bring this critical education to more than 500 regional schools, create a skilled corps of relatable peer leaders, and provide meaningful employment for young adults.

This growth is made possible by your support, and we are so grateful for your partnership!

Links:

• Our Website

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