Leadership Training for Girls in Rural Kenya

Greetings from Enoosaen and all the girls and staff at the Kakenya Center for Excellence! We kicked off the New Year with renewed energy and gratitude for the transformational work that your support is making possible. Thank you for supporting our Health and Leadership program and for believing in our mission to change lives of vulnerable girls through education and empowermnet.

We ended 2016 with a fun-filled week of training at our boarding school campus in Enoosaen. More than 100 girls from the surrounding community joined our 6th and 7th graders for the immersive training experience, and, as always, it was a week of new friendships, skills building, and positive transformations. The week culminated in a year-end graduation celebration for all 300 girls who participated in the week-long camps in 2016. This graduation ceremony serves as an alternative rite of passage for our participants, held at a time when FGM ceremonies traditionally take place. We celebrate the girls' value and accomplishments, reinforcing their right to make their own choices about the future.

As we look forward to another year of learning and growth, we are especially excited about our plans for our weekend training program. Last year, we successfully expanded our reach to two new divisions, Kilgoris and Pirar. This allowed us to train students from 15 additional primary schools, bringing crucial information about sexual and reproductive health, female genital mutilation, gender equity, and child rights to girls and boys as they reach adolescence and begin to make some of the most important decisions in determining their future. In 2017, we will continue to partner with new schools in these divisions, reaching as many of the remaining 74 as possible!

We could not do any of this without wonderful supporters like you. Again, thank you for investing in marginalized girls and making a lasting difference in their lives!

Links:

• Our website

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.