Rescue Maasai Girls from Female Genital Mutilation

Is it our goal at FGM Zero to stop Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) for all time wherever it is practiced.

Currently, we are concentrating our efforts in rural Kenya where the Maasai still practice this brutal tradition.

Every year, we reach out to Maasai school girls in areas where FGM is practiced so that we can share with them the rights they have as citizens of Kenya. FGM is a federal offense in Kenya and forced early marriage is also against the law.

Usually, a young girl approaches our team during an outreach session to tell us her story and seek our support.

We have a Safe House that we operate just outside of the rural village of Lolgorian in the Narok Province, just above the Maasai Mara.

Once we establish that any given girl is truly threatened by FGM, we take her in and waste no time to find her a suitable boarding school. We often have just a day before someone comes to take the scared girl away. In three consecutive cases over the last 18 months, men have come for our girls because their drunken fathers sold them into marriage to pay for their drinking and gambling debts.

All of this costs money and, currently, GlobalGiving donors are the main funders of this program.

The arrival of Susan K.

While in class seven during the long Covid 19 outbreak vacation, Susan K was forced by her parents to undergo the FGM cut.

People outside of Kenya who have never heard of FGM are usually surprised when they learn that it is not just the father of a young girl who supports FGM. Many Maasai mothers have been brainwashed to believe that a girl is closer to God and cleaner if her clitoris and labia are removed. Furthermore, Maasai parents can receive as many as 16 cattle, valued over $250 each, if they sell their daughter into marriage.

With her wounds still healing, Susan K ran away to her sister’s house which just happened to be next to our Safe House.

During an anti-FGM outreach session at a nearby school, Susan shared her sad story with Mary, the manager of our Safe House.

She explained that she had called her father to see if he would change his mind about giving her funds for high school, and that’s what she learned the hunt was on. Her father had already sold her into marriage and he was coming for her.

We immediately granted Susan safe haven. Emergency funds were wired and Susan is now safe and sound in a local boarding school.

Susan is the first victim of FGM we have ever accepted into our program. Usually, we take girls in who are running from FGM, not those who are already cut. It would be morally reprehensible of us, however, if we turned our back on Susan K. She deserves a beautiful future just like all of the young girls we have rescued.

Please see the attached picture of Susan K sitting with Mary K, the manager of our Safe House. 

I have also attached a photo of Sarah, another young woman in our program, who is settling into a new and better school than the one we sent her to at first. I shared Sarah's story in our last report. We knew that a "team of drunkards" was coming for her so we were forced to enter her into the first boarding school we could find. It took us a few months to improve Sarah's situation, but now she is in a school where she can thrive.

This is all thanks to you, our GlobalGiving donor!