They Are The Future

The children are always the brightest parts of my days here in Kenya, for they are seemingly everywhere with their unbridled enthusiasm. I have been visiting schools and teaching classes virtually every weekday for two months and I have learned a lot about the education system in Kenya as well as the promise of the youth. Unfortunately, I am visiting schools and kids in the slums of Nairobi where opportunities are scarce and the promise of youth is sometimes not achieved. I volunteer for an organization called Education for Life that aims to teach the kids life skills and promote strong character development. Just like the words of Abraham Lincoln say, “in whatever you do, be the best you can be”. We are trying to give the children the tools to do this, but the culture of poverty can be hard to overcome.

                This culture starts with the schools we visit. Many of them are informal schools, ones that serve the children and communities that cannot or go to the packed government run schools, the schools with purported “free” education that do not reach parts of the poorest slums. Informal schools run by churches or funded by foreign governments I have visited are as small as the Great Hall in the SLC, with 250 kids cramming into tiny classrooms and the noise level too loud to learn in. Corruption in the government is hurting the government schools as well. I went to a press conference last week led by Kenyan and international NGOs that condemned the Kenyan government from losing around 60 million US Dollars within the Ministry of Education by their officials. This corruption scandal has undermined Kenya’s education system and international reputation, to the point where England has pulled their funding of education to the government and Canada, among other countries, is threatening to do so. Meanwhile, the average Kenyan child is in need of better education to make the most of their life.

                The children of Nairobi’s slums are extremely affected by economics, resulting in the reality of child labour. I have heard people here openly acknowledge that while child labour is wrong, it is practiced because people often have no other choice. Children work at stalls and participate in the informal economy because they either need to provide for their family and for younger siblings or to pay for their schooling. A high school my friend volunteers at specifically caters to youth in the area whose parents cannot pay school fees, either through lack of funds or not being around. The school is subsidized by local charities and the teachers themselves, but it is not unusual for teachers to walk by their students on the street on a school day because they need to work in order to go to school the next term. These youth understand the importance of education; it is an opportunity for a better life.

                Sometimes all of these obstacles seem too big to be overcome but then I start thinking of the positives. One of the biggest is that the youth often take it upon themselves to change. I am involved in a program that teaches entrepreneurship skills to youth and these youth are grasping this opportunity to gain new skills and build a foundation for their future. They are encouraged to change their lives and those will be the citizens of Kenya that will be important to the country’s development over the next thirty years. But can the lack of opportunity still provide encouragement elsewhere? What is stronger, the human capacity to live in community with each other or the animalistic instinct to survive by any means necessary? What will the children of tomorrow do?

Female Empowerment from a Man's Perspective

Of the different economic, political, cultural and social issues I expected to learn about in Kenya, it was a shock to see how many of these tied in to gender issues. I have been disappointed to see that women are not treated equally here but investing in females has proven to be a smart move in the past to fix social problems that have a wide effect. An example of this is Grameen Bank, a microfinance organization started in Bangladesh by Muhammad Yunus that catered almost solely to women. It lent small loans to groups of women because they were dependable and would invest the money wisely and the bank became a cultural phenomenon, leading to Yunus winning the Nobel Prize for Economics. The key to this is giving women a role in decision making with economic impacts at the small scale that causes positive social impacts. Often these improvements start from small initiatives and an example here in Kenya has to do with female sanitary pads.

 Girls in Kenyan schools stay home three to six days per month when they do not have sanitary pads and this can cause a major problem with their education. A small initiative that one fellow student from the University of Waterloo has started here in Kenya has been to bring over reusable pads made out of fabric that can be reused over many cycles along with the patterns for girls to sew the pads themselves. As we are involved with an organization that visits twenty different schools in the slums and teaches them life skills, we can give the pads to girls in need along with teaching them about menstruation and proper hygiene. This is a small initiative that can hopefully educate many women over time about these issues and empower females to depend on themselves. This is often a problem in Kenya, where women are not self-reliant. I have been to classes where girls have been asked when they want to be married and their answers are eighteen because that would mean they can rely on the man and ensure a secure future. How do we empower these women to realize that there is more to their future?

                An organization that has started called the Girl Effect hopes to address the developing world’s young girls and their specific problems. It deals with raising girls out of poverty and investing in education, which will over time increase the standard of living for her and her family while breaking the cycle of poverty. It suggests way to fight the problems that the developing world’s girls have, from fighting illiteracy to the problems of HIV and young pregnancies. These problems are the challenges being faced and the awareness that this organization is trying to spread needs to be paired with grassroots organizations to address these issues.

                When you come from a nation of strong and confident females you notice the vulnerability and shyness of females here. The goal for the Girl Effect is to show what can happen when girls escape poverty, how the power of one girl can change the lives of many through education. Kenya has put out a goal for the country called Vision 2030 that has specific goals regarding the empowerment of women, including a Women Enterprise Fund, increasing the amount of women in political and economic decision-making realms and create a better power equity structure between genders. What is now needed is to combine these goals and the small education initiatives to change how females are treated and how self-reliant they will become over time. Kenya is attempting to invest in women so hopefully the girls I am teaching in class will gain independence from the shackles of their current situation in the future.

For more information on the Girl Effect go to http://www.girleffect.org/learn/the-revolution.