Maasai Girls Education Fund December 2010 Update

To date, 87 Maasai girls have received scholarships from MGEF.  Thirty-two have graduated from secondary school.  Twenty-four have enrolled in colleges and universities.  Fifteen have graduated from institutions of higher education and are working as teachers, nurses, dental technicians, office administrators, and business women.  These young women, and their families, will not live in poverty any longer.  They will choose their husbands, and will have a voice in the decisions that affect their lives and their country.  These women are empowered socially and economically. This is our promise to every MGEF student.

MGEF's promise to every student is an opportunity for economic independence, and that promise is becoming a reality.  In 2010, six MGEF scholarship students graduated from colleges and universities, young women who escaped early marriages and a life of poverty.  All of them have jobs.   Jeniffer Kobaai is one of our 2010 graduates.

Jeniffer Kobaai, July 2003

Jeniffer was 16 years old in

Jeniffer Kobaai, March 2009

2002 and had just completed the 7th grade when her father announced marriage plans for her.  An MGEF scholarship saved her from that fate, and she remained in school as she desperately wanted to do.  This year she graduated from Premese College and began teaching at a private school in Kajiado. 

Other 2010 college and university graduates: 

• Simantoi Kilama earned a diploma in nursing in 2006 and a degree in psychology from the University of Nairobi in 2010.  She is working at a clinic in Nairobi, specializing in mental health.
• Jane Sesia Ndisha received her diploma from Mt. Kenya University and will begin her career as a dental technician in January 2011 at Nairobi Women's Hospital. 
• Priscilla Seet graduated from Kenyatta University and will begin her career as a secondary school teacher in 2011.
• Christine Naserian Leboo graduated from Kenya Air Travel and Related Studies and has started an auto parts business with her husband. 
• Lillian Tamayio graduated from Kericho Teacher's College and will begin teaching in primary school in 2011.

All of our graduates are providing financial support to their families, resulting in improved housing, nutrition, and health care--a continuous benefit that far exceeds the value of a one-time dowry their fathers would have received from their marriage.  Their success and economic assistance to their families are changing age-old oppressive beliefs about educating girls. 

This year MGEF, in partnership with Village Enterprise Fund, launched a new project to provide business training and seed grants to rural Maasai women who have little if any education. More than 80 percent of this generation never enrolled in school, and were married and mothers while they themselves were still children.  They did not have a chance to be educated.  Now they do.   One hundred women benefited from MGEF business training workshops in 2010, resulting in 20 women-owned businesses, a first step out of poverty.

Loodokilani Women

Women Receiving Certificates

Getting girls in school is one challenge.  Keeping them in school is another.  Forty-eight of 100 Maasai girls will enroll in school, but only five of them will graduate from primary school, and less that one in 100 will graduate from secondary school.  Most will be married before the age of 15.  Ninety percent will be circumcised.  Most girls are forced to drop out of school for arranged marriages, but many others end their education because of teen pregnancy or HIV.  Girls between the ages of 15 to 24 are four to six times more likely to become infected with HIV than their male peers. In addition, many girls must drop out of school to take care of ailing parents and younger siblings.

Workshop for Girls

MGEF is meeting this challenge with its Life Skills Workshops.  The workshops provide detailed information to help boys and girls make better life decisions that will ultimately reduce early marriage, teen pregnancy, the practice of female genital cutting, and the spread of HIV.  This year, for the first time, the workshops were held for boys as well as girls.  In 2010, 371 boys and 349 girls attended these workshops.  A total of 1,652 girls have benefited since the program began in 2007.  (Click on the photographs to learn more about the workshops.)

Workshop for Boys

In 2010, a version of the workshop was added for Maasai chiefs and elders, who have the authority, and responsibility, to protect the Maasai, as well as the power to initiate change.  The workshops are addressing the social customs and cultural beliefs that contribute to teen pregnancy, the spread of HIV, the persistent poverty among the Maasai, and the belief that educating a girl is a bad investment.  Ninety-eight men have attended these workshops.
 

Barbara Lee Shaw