Girl Power Clubs Leadership Workshop a Success despite Low Turnout

On Saturday, 28^th January 2017 Girl Power Clubs Africa successfully held a leadership workshop at Sadili Oval grounds. The 3 hour workshop came just 2 weeks after elections of new Girl Power Club leaders had been carried out in all schools in the programme in Nairobi. It was aimed at discussing with the new leaders, among other issues, what is expected from them in their new roles. During the previous week, Sadili’s Social Educators had visited all Girl Power Clubs in Nairobi discussing with them leadership skills. 

The workshop was attended by 4 Girl Power Club leaders from Karama Academy, 7 Sadili staff and 2 guests - both students at Catholic University of Eastern Africa. 

In a fun and highly interactive manner, various topics were covered during the workshop. They included: the history of Girl Power Clubs Africa and its role in training girls to become positive agents of change, personal hygiene as well as menstruation. These topics of discussion each had short breaks in between for games sessions. We all played soccer and other fun games.

Despite the low turnout, everyone seemed positive about the workshop’s success. “We had hoped the number would be bigger, but despite that we are happy that everything else happened as had been planned and that the girls have enjoyed their time with us,” said Everlyne Sigilai, one of Sadili’s social educators. 

 “It was a little intimidating for me at first to see so many staff and just a few of us, but they have been very friendly and I have enjoyed interacting with them. I hope to be here again for more of such activities,” Said Melvin Awino, one of the pupils from Karama Academy.

Girl Power Clubs Africa is a leadership program focused on providing teenage girls with a chance to learn life skills and learn to make decisions that affect their lives and their communities positively.

 

At Last: Proof That Our Program Changes Lives!

It is finally here! The proof that what we hoped for all these years is actually true!

Girl Power Clubs Africa, together with other organizations in Africa and Asia, participated in a unique 3-year DFID-sponsored and Women Win coordinated ‘Building Young Women’s Leadership Through Sport’ (BYWLTS) programme, with the objective of increasing the leadership of adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in formal and informal decision making processes. Women Win worked closely with eight partner organizations in seven countries to deliver quality sport and life skills curricula to over 65,000 AGYW. In addition, AGYW were provided with opportunities to practice leadership through a mentorship program and by learning how to share their stories through Digital Storytelling. Extensive monitoring and evaluation processes were used to understand the impact that the BYWLTS program had on partner organizations. 

Read more about it on this link and be amazed!

Girl Power Clubs Support EA Safari Junior!

Girl Power Clubs bravely took up the major job of running the Life Skills sessions at the annual East Africa Safari Junior Tennis Camp, which ran from 3rd to 14th August 2015 with 42 talented participants learning a lot of skills in tennis and had one life skill session per day. The Girl Power office had the responsibility of ensuring all participants’ were registered and they all had their meals. 

We also volunteered to welcome the kids and run the registration every morning, managed the timing for sessions to free the coaches to concentrate, and also recorded everyone who took meals. For the life skills, we divided the participants into three groups; the young ones below 8 years were taught by Evelyn Sigilai and Loise Mwende, the 10 - 14 years were taught by Joy Akim, and rest by Damaris Mbaabu and Alex.

The group that was most challenging was the older ones. They wanted to listen and share very little or not at all.  This prompted us to include other activities like playing football  before we sat down to talk, we also played other indoor games like monopoly  then had our discussions, we included stories in line with the topic and analyzed them. We surely will have more tricks up our sleeves for the teens at the next holiday camp!

ALA and Sadili Partner To Offer BIAB For Girl Power

On the 11th and 12th of July, Sadili Oval partnered with African Leadership Academy to run a camp at Sadili for 23 select Girl Power Clubs, an exciting way to engage youth in problem identification and solving skills, and developing entrepreneurship ideas run by amazing ALA young leaders, who really inspired the girls.

You can watch it here:
2Jenge Camp (Build-in-a-box) - https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9x8dVmEyWZ5S1J1Vkt0azBJdGM/view?usp=sharing

WHAT IS BUILD IN A BOX?
African Leadership Academy (ALA) seeks to transform Africa by developing a powerful network of over 6,000 leaders who will work together to address Africa’s greatest challenges, achieve extraordinary social impact and accelerate the continent’s growth trajectory. ALA identifies young leaders between the ages of 16-19 from across the continent with demonstrated leadership potential, a passion for Africa, an entrepreneurial spirit, and a track record of community service. These young leaders are then brought together for a two-year pre-university program centred on a unique Entrepreneurial Leadership and African Studies curriculum at our world-class boarding institution in Johannesburg, South Africa.
As part of their leadership journey, ALA students and alumni often take the initiative to run Entrepreneurial Leadership camps in their home countries, embedding them in the practice of leadership through applied learning, and enabling access to networks of opportunities and resources that will further their growth, learning and impact. ALA’s Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) has designed a toolkit to support our students run these Entrepreneurial Leadership camps called BUILD-in-a-Box. BUILD-in-a-Box is a portable toolkit that provides content and teaching materials that allows a team of ALA students and alumni, as facilitators, to run a professional two- day Entrepreneurial Leadership camp.
BUILD-in-a-Box is centered on a unique curriculum framework for teaching youth entrepreneurship as a way of fighting youth unemployment and engaging youth to lead solutions to local problems. The acronym BUILD stands for:
BELIEVE that you have the power to change the world around you, and embrace a mind-set of continual improvement.
UNDERSTAND the community you intend to serve with an entrepreneurial venture. INVENT a wide range of possible solutions by prototyping and testing their
ideas.
LISTEN to feedback from potential customers & other stakeholders and
continually seek iteration and improvement.
DELIVER impactful new ventures and solutions by mobilizing resources and
leveraging networks.
Allowing ALA students and alumni to run BUILD-in-a-Box camps will activate the entrepreneurial mindsets of participants and create opportunities for them to gain firsthand experience designing and leading enterprises that are directly tied to local issues and opportunities in their countries. 

Girl Power Report For May 2015

Bishop Sulumeti Girls looking forward to lifting national titles this term!

May ushers in the second term for schools and the  long rainy and cold season! It’s also the term that schools compete in ball games (Term 2B), including Football, Basketball, Netball, Volleyball, and Handball. We are glad to know that most of the Girl Power Club members in Siaya, Busia and Nairobi Counties are very active participants in sports.

Asango Primary (Siaya County) enjoy netball

In Siaya, the sessions picked up in good time and the only challenge they are facing is the weather, so some schools were very difficult to get to. The wet season makes it difficult to assess some of the schools because they are far and the roads become inaccessible. Motorbikes that go to this places charge expensively in this rainy season.

In our discussion on the topic on the reproductive system the girls needed more information on

·      The hymen.

·      Demonstration on condom use.

·      Virginal discharge.

·      How to clean the outer part of the female reproductive system.

When discussing bodies’ emotion and sexuality, there is need for the following information on

·      How to control and express our emotion.

·      How emotions affect our health.

Nairobi Day Girl Power (Nairobi County) ready for a meeting

In Nairobi the school visits by Girl Power staff and volunteers picked up in the second week as most schools had not settled down by the first week. Below is a breakdown of activities in Nairobi.

SCHOOL	DATE	SESSION
NAIROBI DAY	13/5/2015	REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM
	20/5/2015	REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
ST. CATHERINE	15/5/2015	REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
	22/5/2015	REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
	29/5/2015	BODIES EMOTI AND SEXUALITY
	30/5/2015	HIV AND AIDS (GIRL POWER SPORTS DAY
OLYMPIC PRIMARY	15/5/2015	REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
	22/5/2015	REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
	29/5/2015	DRUG ABUSE
	30/5/2015	HIV AND AIDS(GIRL POWER SPORS DAY)
OLYMPIC HIGH	15/5/2015	REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
	22/5/2015	REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
	30/5/2015	HIV AND AIDS (GIRL POWER SPORTS DAY)
KAREN C	14/5/2015	REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
	28/5/2015	BODIES EMOTI AND SEXUALITY
HURUMA GIRLS		NO SESSIONS ATTENDED THIS MONTH. THE SCHOOL WAS HAVING ALTERNATIVE ACTIVTIES
NAZARENE	13/5/2015	REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
	27/5/2015	BODIES EMOTIONS AND SEXUALITY

 

Olympic Primary leaders prepare for their session

Interns

The Girl Power Clubs office received two interns through the KEPSA program. Loise and Everlyne, have been welcomed and are:

·      Developing Power Point presentations to be used for facilitation.

·      Completing entries of the baseline survey in to sales force.

·      Facilitating life skill sessions in schools.

·      Writing reports.

·      Making presentation on topics to be discussed in schools.

It’s a great experience to nurture young professionals as they discover their path in careers.

Emerging Issues Nairobi County: Feb-March 2015

Certain issues have come up during this quarter, which we are reporting on here:

The topics in the Goal book do not have enough information on certain areas, so its important to get additional support information. For example, the HIV-AIDS topics do not have information on the stages of HIV, symptoms and what the diet of an infected person should be. These are questions that are often asked.

Older girls in the community are reluctant to be seen attending sessions at our Girl Power Clubs Offices in Kibera. This is as a result of complains from the community members that another organization would take girls and get them impregnated.

Some topics like First Aid and Menstruation need more technical support mainly because the girls ask very many questions and some have real health problems that need support.

We have been under pressure from some men who are trying to intimidate us at the Girl Power Office in Kibera, claiming that we are teaching girls how to reject their advances. One man even came and urinated openly on our entrance to show us what "useless women we were".

However, with the opening of Girl Power Offices in Kibera, many members of the community have been very pleased and are sending their younger daughters to come and spend time and "learn something about life". We hope to work with the community to know more about issues that they want tackled jointly, to help their girls.

We also received a visit from Winston Salem State University students who were really shocked and upset about the conditions of living in the slum, and lack of adequate health care.

Shilla, Mueni and Carlcy
Girl Power Clubs - Nairobi County

Girl Power Clubs Siaya County Emerging Issues Report: Feb-March 2015

Girl Power Clubs in Sigomre has been making slow but sure progress this term.  Due to a nationwide teachers strike that paralysed learning in all public schools in the country, many schools opened well into the new term, in early February. Having begun so late in the school term, the school administrations gave priority to catching up with the school syllabuses and curricula over other needs. Many extra-curricular activities were dropped except for those designated as a must by the Ministry of education. The exceptions were competitive inter-school sports tournaments, debates, science congress and drama. In the hurried and packed school timetables many head teachers were reluctant to assign time for student club activities this term even where these appeared on the timetables. A few of the teachers (thankfully vey few) appear to feel that Girl Power is an additional responsibility they can do without unless they receive compensation.

Mentoring of schoolgirls is almost totally ignored in many communities in Kenya, and although the ministry has included counselling in the curriculum in all schools in most cases it is given lip service and only applied on a case by case basis. In the hurried atmosphere that attended resumption of teaching in schools many teachers would rather give the time to remedial classes or sports. Sports usually wins out especially as the responsibility for this is delegated to a coach or sports teacher. Also parents pay for sports activities and expect value for themir money not to mention the fact that most students love sporting activities.

This term there have been a lot of interruptions that interfered with the seamless flow in Girl Power Club activities. Eleven schools in Sigomre Ward have Girl Power clubs, but three of them have yet to hold a Goal activity, especially the secondary schools. Examples are Tingare Secondary,  Moi Uloma, and Got Osimbo Girls. The first two are sport champions in the county while the second one being the only "girls only" boarding school in the constituency is under great pressure to better its academic performance and has embarked on an exam-oriented regime which has even affected sports. Our tactic in most cases has been to turn up anyway and teach a life skill during the sports session or to deliver more than one topic per session.

Despite this, more and more members of the community are eager that their daughters join the Clubs, especially since the girls are involved in sports activities. They say they have seen a positive impact that the sports and life skills activities have had on their daughters and would wish that the work continues. In fact at one public meeting called by the Chief parents wanted to know when Girl Power would start at their local primary and secondary school. There has also been an increase in the number of girls joining Girl Power and we have had to cap this at a maximum of 50 girls to allow for meaningful engagement, especially as use of English is a challenge especially in public primary schools here which begin learning the language only in Std 4. But our insistence on its use is beginning to bear fruit as more members are using it with improved confidence.

The boys of course are quite jealous and a few of the male teachers also  wonder why girls should receive special attention. Such teachers and headteachers have gone as far as using the Girl Power balls for the boys teams saying they are school property. This is the case in St Ignatius Sigomre Primary and in Ninga Primary. However Rome was not built in a day and the positive influence that Girl Power is exerting is changing the girls into questioning injustices and pushing for their rights. This has happened in Ninga Primary where the girls have insisted they too must be given time to play as a team on the soccer pitch and to use the Girl Power balls.

We are pushing on with the work and hope to have more sessions before schools get down to exams or close the term. We are staying positive as usual, because we are POWERFUL!

Maria Okong'o
Project Assistant
Girl Power Clubs Africa
Ugunja Constituency, Siaya County