Eradicate Female Genital Mutilation in Kenya

Based on our efforts, and in collaboration with Kenyan authorities, we rescued 140 girls from late August through December, returning most safely to their homes by November. Some were part of the 1,000-girl cohort we have been working with over the last 19 months, and others came from the broader community, due to increased Covid-related demand for anti-FGM efforts. Before sending them home, and in the presence of authorities, we met with their parents, extracting assurances from them that they will not harm the girls. We continued (and still continue) monitoring the girls, even after they have left the rescue camp we helped establish as a safe haven. We still have six girls in our custody with the authorities’ permission, as their home environment is not safe for their return. We know that there are not enough shelters to save all the girls in danger of FGM. But we are maximizing our impact by practicing community coordination, working on attitudinal and behavioral changes, and integrating our efforts with enforcement of existing laws against FGM.  

Our overall success in preventing FGM has come from our coordinated effort involving community leaders and authorities. In a brief co-authored and published by the International Center for Research on Women, we highlighted the successes of our efforts. Results from our program indicate that it is a promising way to identify girls at risk for FGM in time and mitigate the risk. We are able to demonstrate how merging technology with community-centered programming and consistent outreach and monitoring and evaluation contributes to the elimination of FGM. The consistent outreach has been systematized using our efficient VPack powered data collection program, coupled with one-on-one contact and monitoring of the girls at greatest risk of FGM. Timing was also a determinant of success. Sheltering girls during the season when FGM risk was peaking mitigated their risk; allowing girls who otherwise would have been cut to return to school in January unscathed.

The promising results from this FGM program indicate that community engaged FGM programs with VPack powered real-time monitoring, benefited young girls and should be replicated elsewhere. We have demonstrated the effectiveness of educating communities about the economic, health and emotional harms caused by FGM, and then complementing this with our meticulously recorded real-time data and just-in-time interventions.

That is why we need your support now to continue these activities, replicate them in other communities and scale up our efforts. These girls are desperate, and we are desperate to help them. But we cannot do it without further funding. It is your contribution that has made Last Mile4D’s work possible. We implore you at this critical time to continue your support for our intervention efforts on behalf of the girls, which gives them a shot at a brighter future.

Please follow us on Instagram and Twitter @LastMile_4D. Also, visit our website at www.lastmile4d.org to learn about our work and make contribution to us, directly during the year. We appreciate your support as some of you have opted to be a recurring donor, which brings matching dollars from GlobalGiving to us as well.

Links:

• Evidence-based work in this brief with ICRW
• Technology- & community- empowered programming to eliminate FGM

The specter of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is frightening enough for young girls who have their lives ahead of them. But when you add COVID-19 to the mix, the outlook looks bleaker. The closure of schools due to the virus has devastated the lives of the young girls of Kuria, Kenya. Because schools can no longer provide sanctuary to girls, the closures have led to a sharp rise in the incidence of FGM and early marriage. Taken together, these phenomena close off any prospects for a girl’s emotional and economic future. School closings have meant that women circumcisers can move more easily, earlier, and faster among the villages that practice FGM. Therefore, the cutting “season” that ordinarily starts mid-November is upon us much earlier. We know this because our proprietary VPackand database technologieskeep us informed about which girls are at risk for FGM. We are now in the process of sending our workers door-to-door checking on the girls who reported being frightened about the prospects of being cut. In response, we quickly set up a camp and began rescuing girls.

Based on our efforts, and in collaboration with authorities, we have already rescued 104 girls from the 1,000 girls that have been part of our cohort over the last 15 months. But we are stretched beyond our resources. This is partially due to our sheltering girls, ages 6 to 18, brought to us by the authorities, who were not part of our initial cohort or budgets. But since they were in imminent danger of being cut, we could not turn them away. As soon as the news got out that we set up a rescue camp, many of the parents, whom we have engaged and educated about the harms of FGM, brought their daughters to the camp and asked us to keep them safe, fearful that tribal leaders were going to forcibly cut them. Also, in some cases girls themselves, informed about our programs, ran away to the rescue camp to escape being cut. We are currently providing secure shelter, food, clothing, emotional and educational support to all of these girls, keeping them safe from FGM and early marriage. In a perverse sort of way, this is proof of our concept. Our education and information sharing with the communities about the harms of FGM has mobilized parents, the girls, and the authorities toward the goal of ending this brutal and archaic practice.

We continue informing the communities about the harm of FGM through radio ads, accelerated conversations, and the demonstration effects of our rescues. That is why we need your support now to fund these activities until the schools reopen. These girls are desperate, and we are desperate to help them. But we cannot do it without further funding. It is your contribution that has made Last Mile4D’s work possible. We implore you at this critical time to continue your support for our efforts to rescue the girls and give them a brighter future.

Please follow us on Instagram and Twitter @LastMile_4D. Also, visit our website at www.lastmile4d.org to learn about our work and make contribution to us, directly during the year. We appreciate your support as some of you have opted to be a sustaining donor, which brings matching dollars from GlobalGiving to us as well.

Links:

• about FGM
• Partners and authorities in support of VPack