Rescue Maasai Girls from Female Genital Mutilation

Global Roots has been fighting Female Genital Mutilation one girl at a time for over 15 years.

Funds raised from generous GlobalGiving donors have helped pay the annual expense of boarding schools for the girls in our program and the expenses of our Safe House when we either take in a new girl or welcome our girls are on vacation from boarding school.

Other expenses include the quarterly “know-your-rights” anti FGM outreach sessions we conduct at secondary schools across the Trans-Mara region (the rolling hills above the famed Maasai Mara).

We are proud today because one of our former program beneficiaries is about to catch a flight for Cape Town where she has been accepted into a university masters program for information technology. Attached is a photo pf Sylvia with her new laptop four years ago on her first day of college.

I've been thinking about the day Sylvia came to us in 2014. She was facing forced early marriaged and FGM and she knew she would also have to drop out of high school. 

Sylvia did not know much about FGM when she was a child – but she did know that she wanted to remain in school – and that’s exactly what she did. She did it all on her own – with funding from Global Roots. We didn’t check to see if she was doing her homework and we didn’t ask about her social life. We simply agreed to pay for her undergraduate college education in Narok, Kenya. If she attended classes, we would pay for it. Sylvia did much more than just attend classes -- she excelled. She learned computer IT so fast that she secured a paid internship in Nairobi after her first year of college. And now, she is on her way to grad school!

Sylvia's graduate school package includes airline tickets, tuition, housing and even a per diem. The only thing she didn’t have was funds to cover her visa application and medical tests. We gladly took care of these expenses for her.

We’ve had several other program beneficiaries graduate college but Silvia is the first to head off to grad school. Good luck Silvia! 

Moving on, if you read our last report, you know that we recently accepted a young woman, aged 15, into our program. Her name is Susan and she had been recently forced to dure Female Genital Mutilation.

An investigation into Susan’s life by Mary K, the manager of our Safe House, immediately proved that she was in imminent risk of forced marriage. We accepted Susan into our FGM protection program despite the fact she was already subjected to the brutal cuts of FGM. How could we turn our back on her when all she had in her future was forced marriage and a lifetime of pain related to her wounds.

It didn’t take us much digging to understand that school wasn’t a route that Susan could take. Fortunately, Mary K had been harboring an idea that we could try out on young women who lack the interest or mental disposition for school.

Once we got our accounting updated (no funds are ever dispensed until Mary K's handwritten accounting is converted to spreadsheets and reviewed -- see photo "accounting") we immediately enrolled Susan into a tailoring course and we paid $200 for a sewing machine and half the program fees. Hopefully, Susan will take advantage of this opportunity in the same way that Sylvia did. If she does, we will pay the rest of her fees and help her get a business set up! See attached photo of Susan at her vocational school.

"I am so grateful to have this opportunity," said Susan when she arrived at the vocational school. It took her a moment to understand that she did not have to do anything to study...like clean, collect trash or do some kind of menial labor  "I know that God is with me, but God doesn't give money to pay for things. Please give a big thanks to whoever made this happen for. Please give a big thanks to whoever made this happen for. I was at the end."

Thank you GlobalGiving donors!