Life Lifters - Kenya

Background

Since its inception, Life Lifters Kenya has been dedicated to investing in African (Kenyan) rural girls who are oftentimes locked in deep cycles of poverty, cultural limitations, and gender imbalances. Our goal as an organization is to build a safe haven where rural girls can unlock their educational and economic potential. By economically empowering girls, we ensure that most rural girls have access to quality education, mentorship, business training, and economic opportunities that positively impact their lives and that of their families and community in general.

Vienna-based World Poverty Clock indicates that more than 4.1 million women in Kenya are living below the standard poverty line. These statistics are significantly higher and saturated in slums and rural areas where women have less education and access to productive resources such as capital, land, etc. As of 2021, approximately 49.2% of the total labor force in Kenya were women (World Bank). Although this is an improvement from 2010 (47.8%), the growth is significantly slower with the majority of women (92%) earning a livelihood from informal urban economies.

Why we invest in Rural Girls

• Rural girls have limited access to educational and economic opportunities
• Rural girls are more at risk of being affected by barbaric cultural practices e.g FGM
• In Kenya, One in two girls in rural areas marries by age of 19
• Girls who live in cash-poor environments are at risk of dropping out of school.
• We believe rural girls have a massive potential that needs to be unlocked

What we have achieved in the past 6 months

Since our last conference in October, we have been more focused on ensuring that the current girls we support have access to adequate resources and support to succeed. So far:

• Two of our girls have graduated from high school and would be transitioning to college
• We are currently successfully supporting 6 teenagers through high school by providing them with tuition and basic shopping (i.e sanitary towels, soap, toothpaste, polish, etc)
• Two of our girls have been selected to join the student leadership i.e academic head and head of the health center respectively
• One of our girls won a dancing competition at her school
• We are also actively recruiting 3 more teens to join our scholarship program
• Lastly, Life Lifters is also actively improving its operational processes, we have put together a new board of directors and would be registering the project as an NGO in Kenya

I hope the following report gives you a quick review of what we are up to. We are super grateful for your continued support and lets continue to impact the world one girl at a time. Cheers!

Links:

• Our Board Of Directors

BACKGROUND 

Life Lifters Kenya is a women empowerment incubator that seeks to build the next generation of economically empowered women in Africa. The organization incubates, mentors, and invests in high-achieving girls from rural communities in Kenya and Africa and builds them to be influential women in their communities and beyond. Life Lifter's main activities are centered on girls’ education and entrepreneurship. The organization invests resources in smart underprivileged teenage girls through scholarships, training, and mentorship programs. Our two-tier program is also composed of an entrepreneurship aspect that works with young women in different communities to help them launch and expand their enterprises.

CONTEXT

Life Lifters Kenya currently operates in Nandi County Kenya where cases of teenage pregnancy, early marriage, and general abuse of women's rights are rampant. In 2020 alone, more than 20,000 teenagers were expected to drop out of school and 6000+ girls got pregnant between January and September. Although there are diverse solutions to these problems, poverty, combined with low distribution rates of information, technology, and other resources continues to hinder most girls from overcoming these problems.

THE POWER OF AN EDUCATED GIRL CONFERENCE

Last month (October 2021) Life Lifters Kenya implemented the first aspect of this program by organizing a 3-day conference in Kisumu Kenya that brought together 8 teenagers from our Girls Educate Program. In the conference, the girls explored career development (Branding and communications, goal setting), Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights training and self–awareness, and self-esteem training.

The objective of this conference was to build the teenager's confidence in their education, careers, and bodies by offering training on career development, Sexual reproductive Health, Branding and communications, and self-awareness and self-esteem

CAREER DEVELOPMENT

Led by Cynthia the founder of Life Lifters Kenya. In this training, the girls learned about goal setting, branding for career success, and how to build mind maps. Each teen was encouraged to build a mind map that depicts their intended success and explore deeply what it means to be a doctor, lawyer, or even accountant. The girls were encouraged to learn about the different career paths they would like to follow and learn about what it takes to exist in those career paths.

SEXUAL REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS (SRHR)

In this training, the girls explored patriarchy and how it interacts with both the private and public spaces. The girls learned about what patriarchy is, how to make personal matters public and how to best position themselves in both spaces for both personal and career success. The girls learned about what constitutes sexual reproductive health and rights such as their rights to receive information on sexuality, their right to sexuality education, their right to choose their partner, etc. We also explored the bodily autonomy component by discussing deeply what bodily autonomy is and how choice, voice, and agency help the girls access the help they need.

BRANDING AND COMMUNICATIONS

Led by Caroline who is an entrepreneurship champion passionate about women's economic empowerment. In this training, the girls learned about personal branding and how they could leverage aspects of their stories and achievements for career and educational success. The girls were taught how to interact with different individuals and how to create an elevator pitch that can help them acquire an internship or even a scholarship opportunity. The training was highly practical and each teen got to make a presentation.

SELF AWARENESS AND SELF ESTEEM TRAINING 

In this training, the girls were introduced to self-awareness training that helped them think intrinsically about who they are and how to leverage their strengths for both educational and career success. By using models like Johari’s widow, Karen, a psychologist, helped the girls understand their relationships with themselves and how they interact with other people in their families, schools, and communities.

KEY INSIGHTS 

• That Girls value education and are ready to learn more
• That there are a lot of misconceptions about what a man and woman can do that we need to decipher
• That Girls would love to interact with more women from different career spaces
• That most girls lack knowledge about role models they could follow
• That most girls are interested in learning abroad and we need to do a training on this
• The training on patriarchy was very in-depth and we need to explore it again

Thank you for walking with us on this journey and helping us support, mentor, and economically empower girls. You are our hero.