MGEF Providing Economic Independence for Maasai Women

The Maasai Girls Education Fund is dedicated to educating Maasai girls and providing each and every one of our students with the knowledge and skills to get a job in Kenya. In this way, we are empowering Maasai women to end early marriages of girls and develop alternative rites of passage into womanhood, to reduce poverty and all of its consequences in their communities, and to become all that they dream to be.

This month, MGEF celebrates its third student graduating from college.  Caroline Senteu Kashinin graduated from the Kenya Medical Training College in Mombasa and has started her first nursing job in Imbirikani, Kenya, her home. In a recent e-mail, Caroline wrote: 

I am fine and happy that I cleared college and got a job in my own home place of Imbirikani.  I am working with AID (Africa Infectious Diseases) Village Clinics based in Loitokitok, which is a 20-minute walk from my house.   Something that makes me happy is that I went out of my community empty, but I came back as a professional and a role model to so many people.  I am really glad and thankful to MGEF for your support and encouragement throughout my college life.

Caroline has been actively advocating against female genital mutilation since she started college, speaking at churches and community meetings to convince her people to end the practice.  She has also promised to help other Maasai girls get an education.

All three of our college graduates are working. 

Simantoi Kilama (right), MGEF graduate and a registered public health nurse since 2006, has continued her job at Fatima Clinic in Nairobi while working toward a degree in psychology at the University of Nairobi.  Nantito Kishoyian (left), who earned a certificate in catering in 2006, is a chef’s assistant for a company in Kajiado, providing daily meals for a Chinese road construction crew that will be working in the area for the next four years.  Both Simantoi and Nantito help their families with medical expenses and school fees for younger family members, and also buy them food. 
The greatest barrier to girls’ education is poverty, which perpetuates the practice of early marriage for the benefit of the dowry.  These young women are, by their example, demonstrating that the economic benefits of educating a girl far exceed the one-time dowry she would bring from a marriage.

These are the fruits of our first eight years, and it is just the beginning.  Of the sixty-two students currently receiving MGEF scholarships, eight are enrolled in college, and eight secondary school graduates will be enrolling in college programs in 2009. 

We have continued our Life Skills Workshops, which give girls age ten and older the knowledge and skills to prevent teen pregnancy, reduce early marriages and female circumcision, as well as the spread of HIV—all significant factors contributing to girls’ dropping out of school and taboo subjects in the Maasai culture.  More than 1,200 girls have attended these workshops in the past two years.  

I would like to close this year’s letter with a story:  Every year for Christmas, a grandfather in Maryland gives his grandchildren the gift of a charitable donation to the charity of their choice.  In 2007, his six-year-old granddaughter, who had learned about the Maasai people when a Maasai group visited her school, chose to help the Maasai. After researching, with her mother, the possible ways to accomplish her goal, she decided to sponsor the education of a second-grader in Kenya, Topisia Kisurkat, through a donation to MGEF.  Topisia (right) comes from Torosei, a rural area near the Kenya-Tanzania border.  She is eight years old and the eldest of six children in a very poor family.  They have no cows. Sponsorship began in January 2008, and Topisia ended her second grade year this past November with an A average.  The two girls are now corresponding and hope someday to meet each other in Kenya.

MGEF is having an impact.  Three out of three college graduates are working and helping their families.  Their communities are recognizing the economic benefits of educating their daughters, rather than marrying them for a dowry. More girls are enrolling in school.  And more will stay in school if given the opportunity.  For girls who must drop out of school for lack of school fees, pregnancy, or early marriage, MGEF provides scholarships that allow them to complete their education.  This would not be possible without the generous support of many people.  On behalf of all Maasai, I would like to thank Aid for Africa, Green Park Foundation, Stiftung Kinder-Hilfe, The Summit Fund of Washington, The Tides Foundation and the many individuals whose generous support and commitment to Maasai girls’ education have contributed to our success.

With appreciation and best wishes for the holiday season,



Barbara Lee Shaw