Enhance (mental) health of 1,358 Kenyan youths

CONTRIBUTION TOWARDS THE TRAINING OF ‘UNREACHED-GIRLS COMMUNITY RESOURCE PERSONS (CRPs)’

In the past four months KAP was fortunate to have received new funds through one of GlobalGiving’s co-donors. Therefore new intensive activities needed to be put in place for a good start. However, this reduced our capability to do sound fundraising for our GlobalGiving projects. In this period we used the most-welcome funds so kindly received from our faithful GlobalGiving friends for filling some funding gaps in our Unreached Youths activities for our ‘Emma Girls’ training.

This ‘Girls-Unreached Youths Community Resource Persons (CRPs)’ training took place at a local Kitale Girls Secondary School and mixed schools/community groups in a semi-rural- and a shanti town area in Kitale’s outskirts. 

Here in total 687 girls benefitted from KAP’s training, of whom 75 as (girls-only) Unreached Youths CRPs.

Activities involved core- and refresher workshops as well as follow-up activities such as Micro-Meetings, Micro-Teachings, Guided Education-, Psycho-Education- and Professional Counselling Sessions. 

The Aim of the Training was:

“Participants’ improved self-esteem, hope, and ability to take action and organize their lives in more purposeful ways, especially reducing their risky behaviors related to HIV/AIDS, abuse/addiction, and violence.” 

NB. For confidentiality reasons the names in this report have been changed. 

IMPACT - SUICIDE

In Kenya suicides among young people are frequent and increasing rapidly. This is an extremely sad and shocking fact. It is also very complicated, one of the reasons why as yet too little is being done to address the issue. 

The Daily Nation Newspaper of September 11, 2023 (page 14) reports that…
In sub-Saharan Africa, Kenya is among the countries with the highest suicide rates, higher even than India and Mexico. World Bank estimates indicate that this is 6.1 people per 100,000. The Ministry of Health's Kenya Mental Health Policy 2015-2030 says suicide following road accidents is the leading cause of death in non-communicable diseases. This increasing trend mainly occurs among young people between 15 and 24 years old. Of these, 6 out of 10 reports concern girls/young women.

(Attempted) suicide or suicidal thoughts also occur frequently in the life stories of our ‘Emma Girls’ Participants. In our ‘Makutano Girls' group, 3 participants (more than 10%) talked about their (repeated) suicide attempts, while at least one participant mentioned serious suicidal thoughts. There could be more. The same applied to the ‘Crossroads Group’. 

Sexual abuse is often cited as a reason for suicides among girls. This in turn is often linked to issues such as single parenthood, abandonment and rejection, even by parents or families; and (altogether) a lack of connection and identity. This, and the often associated poverty and low power status of girls, mean that girls easily fall into voluntary and forced sexual exploitation: multiple sexual partners among peers, girls trafficked for sexual activities by caregivers, friends, teachers and even parents, and rape. Sometimes in broad daylight, literally blinding for the girls: during the lunch break at school, while your violent (step)father is waiting for you at home in the evening. Forced and threatened to remain silent. Traditionally, parents are not supposed to discuss sexual matters with their children, that's what aunts (or uncles) or grandmothers were for, but they are now far away; Often parents have bad marriages, with mother and daughter sometimes both terrorized by the same abuser. There also is the cruel role of money, when used to buy and sell sex, to settle the abuse, or as a 'right' to rape: “Oh! this man paid your school fees!”

We are happy to see that our interventions make a substantial difference.

However, we are also aware that much more needs to be done to slay this dragon – so deeply entrenched in the web of broken communities, new lifestyles and all the related wrong practices and evil partnerships.

KAP plans to more intensively involve parents, caregivers and teachers, and explore further ways to strengthen its network for tackling abuse. In this regard corruption remains a serious obstacle. 

AN EXAMPLE

JANET is a 16-year-old girl and a student at the local high school. She comes from a family of four children with a single mother. During her childhood, she went through a series of traumatizing events: the loss of her biological father, her mother's attempted suicide, and the rape of her older sister. I met Janet during our Makutano girls training in December 2022. She was depressed, and told her story as follows:

                “Our father died when I was 9 months old. During his burial ceremony, I sat with my mother at the edge of the grave. I was told that when my mother fainted I almost rolled out of her hands into the grave, started screaming and crawling but luckily was rescued by the mourners. After a while my mother remarried to another man. Unfortunately, he took advantage of our vulnerable situation and abused us. He quarreled every day and hit and fought with our dear mother to such an extent that she planned the murder of herself and all of us. Fortunately, the man left our home just in time after another serious domestic violence incident, freeing us from his emotional and physical abuse. Violence and trauma showed themselves to me for the third time when we went to collect firewood in the forest with my older sister and older brother. There was also a man there tending his cattle. When we finished getting firewood, the man stood in front of us, grabbed my older sister and threatened to kill us if we raised the alarm. He had a knife in his hands. So we kept quiet while he undressed my sister and raped her in front of us. At home we told this event to our mother. But because we were unable to pay our community leaders for their services due to lack of financial resources, no action was taken against the perpetrator and my sister was not helped. We were really short of money, so much so that I sold the skirt of my school uniform so we could buy food.”

                Janet was not active during the first three days of the workshop. She took notes silently and had only minimal social interaction. We facilitated topics on issues affecting young people, including challenges of single parenthood, self-esteem and causes of traumatizing issues. When other participants in the small groups began to share moving examples from their life stories, Janet also gathered courage and began to tell her painful story piece by piece. Because this was very in-depth, we as facilitators made an appointment for one-on-one counselling. In that way we were able to pay better attention to her feelings of loss and grief, dealing with her suicidal thoughts and her traumas related to the rape. In the follow-up sessions, her self-awareness and self-image gradually became stronger and Janet also learned skills to deal with life and make decisions.

She now says she feels relieved, happy and able to focus on academic school matters. KAP helps her think about the next steps in her life, and find her way to make them possible. 

• KAP Financial Report 26.06.2023 - 27.10.2023 (PDF)
  
• Unreached Girls: Reconciliation Ceremony (DOCX)