By Mahnaz M. Harrison | Project Leader
We are continuously encouraged by our field officers’ involvement with the girls and their communities on battling Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Another community-based organization (CBO) from west Pokot in Kenya asked us to implement the same project in their community. We had limited financial capacity under our institutional grants to extend our anti-FGM reach there. However, with support from families and friends like you, we have begun working in west Pokot in a limited capacity to try to help. We are giving access to our proprietary educational modules to the head of the CBO so they can be deployed to the schools in west Pokot. We also enabled them inviting stakeholders to a community/parent meeting to discuss the harms of FGM and gave them access to our parent educational module. We are also running a radio ad in the local language that is impacting both community members and authorities’ actions in relation to FGM. The ad highlights the harms of FGM, the criminal illegality of FGM, and the risk of fines and jail time for those practicing FGM. This ad is putting clans and tribal leaders on notice, as they are the single biggest barriers in complying with the Presidential Decree that outlaws FGM.
Socioeconomic burdens of COVID-19 continue harming the girls and their families in Kenya. Therefore, our field officers are forced to provide health-related handouts, such as sanitary pads or masks, as they visit the girls. We are providing them with reusable masks that carry the message of “Stop FGM” in the local language. And we are creating physical spaces for women and girls to use sewing machines to make these masks locally, empowering them economically. The field officers give the masks out to the “at risk” girls as they visit them. These masks are durable and reusable, helping to reduce environmental degradation. Each mask is costing us one US dollar. Perhaps you would consider supporting us for $10, $20, $50 or $100 so we could provide masks to all who are visited by the field officers and their community members.
The closure of the schools because of holidays has put all of us on high alert as we are hearing some families are planning to cut their girls during these “opportunity moments”. We are positioned to rescue them, as we have since Covid started, and have already initiated conversations with schools that can be used as sanctuary camps. Please help us to keep them safe!
We know we have moved the needle, but we also know that a tipping point can only be reached when changed attitudes and behaviors that result from our sustained effort become the new norm for the community. For this we need your continuous generous support. We believe that we can put an end to this pernicious practice, and that we can amplify and make sustainable our own work if we can get donors to support our efforts to scale up our activities, so that the practice of FGM becomes a relic of the past.
That is why we need your support now to continue these activities, replicate them in other communities and scale up our efforts. Girls in FGM-practicing communities 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 ask you to continue your support for our intervention efforts on behalf of the girls, so they can reach their dreams of a better life.
To add credibility to our work, we are providing you evidence of our efforts and successes, which were highlighted in a brief co-authored with and published by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). We were able to demonstrate how merging technology with community-centered programming and consistent outreach and monitoring and evaluation contributes to the elimination of FGM.
Please help keep us changing the attitudes and norms with your generous support.
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. Million thanks for supporting us.
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