Improving lives of 1000 girls in Nairobi's slums

Three Mrembo program participants: Naomi, Veronica and Janet were endorsed to participate in the 2016 Global Early Adolescent study (GEAS) video competition. The GEAS is focused on various countries around the globe with the goal of understanding the forces that shape girls and boys behaviors, the messages that young people get and the consequences of those messages. The girls were invited to create and share short videos to tell their stories, about how girls learn to “be women” and what it means to become adolescents in their contexts and cultures. Stories can be funny, emotional, sad or exciting. The videos can show relationships with family school, friends, or other important people in life. They can be personal story, an interview, and a walk through neighborhood. Participants whose videos are selected will receive a honorarium and the winning videos will be displayed during the 2016 international conference on family planning to be held in Indonesia, January 25.The winning participants will also become finalists to be part of the GEAS adolescent advisory team over the course of the next 5 years and will be called upon for advice as well as participating in meetings. The entire VAP family wishes good luck to these girls as they prepare to go global.

Even as most of the Nairobi areas were engulfed with chilly weather on the Saturday of 14th 2015, this couldn’t stop 20 girl teams from across Eastlands part of Nairobi to put their best football feet forward at the Jericho community field during the sixth edition of Miss Mrembo football tournament. The wet and slippery surface of the ground played disadvange to some of the players and more advantageous to some players especially those with (acrobatic skills) which had to come into action unintentionally. As a taboo for Miss Mrembo tournaments, the games were characterized with life skills sessions including sexual health reproductive rights delivered on site by Mrembo coaches before the matches, during the intervals, and after the matches. Tagged with an objective of creating a platform for adolescent girls and young women to share their personal life experiences, learning from each other, having fun, creating leadership and encouraging girls to participate in sports, the participants had a great opportunity to open up and have a candid talk with Mrembo coaches on issues affecting their lives. With some of the Mrembo coaches having a great deal of experience going through what some of the girls are going through and had an opportunity of bouncing back to life, their role model status and advice to the participants played a significant role to some of the girls and young women in attendance.

Miss Mrembo 2015 Beauty Pegeant

To wrap up the tournament, a beauty pageant contest to identify the new 2015 miss Mrembo was put on display attracting seven candidates from all the Mrembo program centres. One after another, walking style after walking style, both in African attires and sports attires accompanied with gorgeous look and make up courtesy of Mrembo Salon, the candidates had to perform a catwalk on the runaway in front of the judges while receiving a round of applause and cheers from their respective teammates. The five invited judges led by Mrs Judy Nyaga,standard chartered bank, Regional Head, subsidiary governance, Africa Group corporate secretariat had an opportunity to pose questions related to sexual health reproductive and rights as well as sports to all the beauty pageants. The criteria of choosing Miss Mrembo 2015 was based on how best the candidate would answer reproductive health, rights and sports questions Vis a vis the look, design and the walking style. The newly crowned Miss Mrembo 2015 received a pair of football cleats, 6 months supply of sanitary towels and a shopping voucher of Kenya shillings 3,000.Runners up received a pair of football cleats, 3 month supply of sanitary towels and a shopping voucher of Kenya shillings 3,000.Third position grabbed a pair of football cleats, 2 months supply of sanitary towels and a shopping voucher of Kenya shillings 1,000.”Am glad to know my rights as a girl child and I know where to report cases if my rights are infringed. I will uses my knowledge to empower other girls in my community. “Said the newly crowned Miss Mrembo 2015.