Tag Archives: Gender Issues

Freedom

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“I had to repeat Class 8 several times because there was not funding for secondary school. That is when WISER came to my rescue.” – Leah, a WISER alumni

I am learning that WISER has “come to the rescue” for many girls. By providing girls with a scholarship that funds their entire secondary education, WISER is quite literally rescuing girls and their families from the stress of coming up with school fees. Unlike in the United States, public school is Kenya is not free. There are still fees that have to be paid—both at the primary and secondary level. This is where families are in situations where they have to choose whose education they fund. Most of the time, if there is enough money to fund only one child’s education, a son will be chosen to go to school over a daughter.

However, a lack school fees is not the only barrier keeping girls in Kenya out of the classroom. There is a simple resource every adolescent girl needs—sanitary pads. When a girl does not have access to pads, she misses school or uses dangerous alternatives such as rags, leaves, cotton wool, or mattress stuffing. According to the ZanaAfrica Foundation, almost a million girls in Kenya miss up to six weeks of school every year—many even eventually drop out—all because their families cannot afford sanitary pads and proper underwear.

WISER has partnered with Huru International, an organization that provides girls with free kits that have reusubale sanitary pads, HIV / AIDs prevention information, and resources necessary to promote sexual and reproductive health. In Kiswahili, Huru means freedom. WISER and Huru International are giving our girls the freedom to stay in school. Even more than that, WISER is providing younger girls in Muhuru that are still in primary school with sanitary pads in hopes of them missing less days of school. There is empowerment and there is freedom in understanding our bodies and in having safe resources to meet our bodies’ needs.

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Meet Melavin. “I am WISER because I want to be a light to all the underprivileged girls of Muhuru Bay.” She is one of our Form 4 students, and she is a just weeks away from completing her KCSE (Kenyan Certificate of Secondary Education). Because WISER has enabled her to stay in school, she will hopefully now continue to obtain higher education. One day she wants to return to Muhuru to pull her family out of poverty and to inspire the girls who also come from this community. That’s the beauty in educating the girl child; she returns. Educated girls are more likely return to the community in which they were raised. That is how communities are transformed, empowerment is generated, and freedom lives.

Why Kenya?

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I graduated from college yesterday. In about one month I board a plane to Kenya. (I am also taking the GRE between now and then). I think about all these things and I have to laugh and cry and remind myself to breathe. Now that graduation is over, my real preparation begins.

On June 16th I leave for Muhuru Bay, Kenya, a small fishing village off the coast of Lake Victoria. I will live at an all-girls secondary school, WISER (the Women’s Institute for Secondary Education and Research.) My project is based on researching and documenting how the WISER model of education is creating an enabling environment for empowerment for young women (in hopes of the WISER model being replicated in other Kenyan communities).

Again and again, I have answered the question: “Why would you go to Kenya?” This question has has been asked in different forms and through different frames — sometimes out of genuine curiosity, sometimes out of deep concern,  and sometimes simply out of confusion.

I think I can better answer the “Why Kenya” question by answering this one: “Why are girls’ rights important to you?” This issue is important to me because it is important to our world. Girls having equal opportunities to choice, to education, and to resources provides better economic, social, and health outcomes for girls and boys, for men and women, for everyone. It is important because it is a human rights issue. Because every girl deserves to be seen, to be heard, and to be known. Because I am girl. Because I have been celebrated for being a girl from the moment I took my first breath.

I am privileged. My privilege is all over me. Irreversible, irremovable.  I wear it on my skin. I display it with my freedoms. I can hear it in my voice, my words. I carry it with the diploma I received yesterday. I live it with the choices I make for my life. Privilege is not the reality for most women and girls on this planet. Without change, without movement, and without support for education it never will be.

The best way to support me and to support this project is to tear down the political and geographic barriers that we often subconsciously put up when we think about global issues. Donate to WISER and educate yourself on girls’ rights around the world. Follow me, travel with me, and learn with me.