Gender Equality Kenya Project #17210

Train 120 Health & Human Rights promoters in Kenya

by Hope Foundation for African Women (HFAW)

Project Report | May 20, 2022
Tackling The Jiggers a Pathway to Preventing FGM

By Edah Mokua | Project Manager

Gladys removing jiggers and applying oil to maria

To Our Friends and Supporters,

Meet Maria from the Nyamusi ward of Nyamira, Kenya. She is elderly and a good example of many grandmothers and grandfathers who live with their grandchildren. Like many of her age mates she is jigger infested and an ardent supporter of FGM.

HFAW recently did an advocacy in Nyamusi School and found students who are jigger infected. We discovered that their grandparents are jigger infested as well. An earlier project with elderly and women living with disabilities had already exposed this jigger problem. Maria recounted how she had lost her daughter to diseases including jiggers. Because she is poor and did not own even a radio, she had no access to information on jigger’s prevention and issues of FGM.

It is hard to close our eyes to such a problem even though it is outside our mandate. Our role was to sanitize her and her house as well as educate about jigger issue and its eradication. We also spoke with other our trained health promoters to begin extending our work to this unreached village. In addition, we were able to educate her and others on FGM and its consequences. She was surprised that FGM was a harmful practice because she was teaching people to do it.

‘I didn’t know FGM is harmful’ said Maria. She encouraged us to tell the younger people.

She was grateful for the jigger treatment including that of her grandchildren.

Dear friend, we thank you for choosing to walk this journey of transforming the lives of girls and women and men in our community. What we did to the few grandmothers and grandfathers is the tip of the ice bug. Many more women need to be reached. It is one of the most heartbreaking situation we have ever come across. Kindly continue sharing with your friends and family so that they can support our work. Many grandmothers and grandfathers and children who are jigger infested expect us to go back and sanitize more homes.

Gladys washing Maria's legs

Maria telling a story about her daughter who died

Jiggers infestation on his feet and toes

Maria's legs before being washed

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Jan 21, 2022
Renewed Hope For the New Year!

By Lancer Wao | Communications Officer

HFAW Director, Dr. Grace Mose during filming

Dear Friend and Partner

Happy New Year

It is wonderful to speak to you again. The new year brings hope and renewed energy to advocate for what is right and safe, and strengthen efforts in amplifying the voice of the vulnerable and people who need our help. As we reflect on what that means to us and how that guides our project of training community health and human rights promoters to help in fighting FGM.

When we started this project, we were ordinary people who saw the power of training in ending cultural vices ailing our society and threatening to subject vulnerable girls and women to the vicious cycle.

The number of community health promoters trained and continuing to effectively and collaboratively conduct end-FGM, end-teenage pregnancy, and teaching life skills education has increased to more than 80. Furthermore, we are happy to have created links and networks at the local level leaders and healthcare providers. This milestone has impeccably transformed our operations at an organizational level and positive impact in creating needed conversations surrounding the safety and health of girls and women in Kenya.

Moreover, before going into the end-year break, we had a wonderful session documenting our story with support from the GlobalGiving team. Words cannot express how happy and humbled we were when we received news of this opportunity. This necessitated HFAW to bring on board the community health and human rights promoters who have been key in making a positive impact on the lives of girls and women who are at risk of FGM. The video follows the journey of our founder, Dr. Grace Mose Okong'o. We look forward to sharing with you the final video. Our hope is that by taking part in this, you get to see the amazing work your support has done in our community.

Looking into 2022, we are more hopeful that this is the year to make our voices in ending FGM, teenage pregnancy, and gender-based violence louder and bolder. We welcome you to continue joining hands with Hope Foundation for African Women.

Some of HFAW CHHRPs during the filming

HFAW team and Dr. Grace's students during filming

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Sep 21, 2021
Radio Outreach Helping us Reach More People to Training on Health and Human Rights

By Lancer Wao | Communications Officer

Gladys from HFAW at Radio Vuna (past event)

Dear Friend and partner

We are is excited to speak to you again about the amazing and impactful work that you are doing in our community through your generous contributions.

Positively speaking, as we approach the end of the year, we cannot help but be amazed by how far we have come. The outbreak of Covid-19 created a lot of anxiety and uncertainties. With a lot of questions on how to implement the training for health and human rights promoters given the common priority to protect of keeping the community safe from Covid-19, we continue to brave through the period through reinventing and innovating safer ways of engaging the members of the community on how to end female genital mutilation and other forms of domestic violence, teenage pregnancy, child abuse, and improving access to life skills education.

Over the past few months, we have severally engaged on radio and social media for creating awareness on the health effects of Female Genital Mutilation and other forms of Gender-Based Violence, and child abuse. Although we have used this form of media in the past, what we love about it especially now as that it has enabled us to engage more actively on the issues we are advocating on at a mainstream level. Through this, we have gotten feedback on the effectiveness of the approach. Also, the platform has allowed us to gauge the change in perception among the community on FGM, other forms of GBV, child abuse, teenage pregnancy, and the need for life skills education. We believe that this is important because the feedback will guide our next steps. Furthernore, it has supported us in creating relationships and networks with the media sector.

As we chart the way forward and learning to cope with the new normal of implementing our activities, we remain grateful that you choose to accompany us in this journey. Remember to share our work with your friends and family for them to see the smiles that you put on our faces.

Lovingly, Hope Foundation for African Women team

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