Girls' Empowerment Clubs
About this Project
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This project supports after-school girls clubs that offer counseling, social and medical information, and advice to female students. Male students also join sometimes to learn about their role in reducing gender inequity in the future.
Detailed Project Description [click here]
These clubs have been founded at Mwanza Secondary Schools to address a host of issues facing our female students. The clubs meet once weekly, and typical activities include:
- Discussing challenges which students experience and sharing how those challenges have affected and will affect their lives as girls (examples include discrimination, exclusion from activities and opportunities, unfair expectations for work in the home, early pregnancies, abortion, and unsafe sex);
- Giving testimonies on how they have managed to overcome a challenge that they couldn’t before joining empowerment club, like contesting for leadership positions, deciding what is best for themselves, facing temptations and overcoming them, and studying harder to choose any career they like;
- Sharing information and skills on how to keep themselves clean during menstruation and how to deal with other female health issues that they do not receive adequate training for in school or at home;
- Reading articles written by fellow youths about changes there are passing through as adolescents;
- Inviting boys (sometimes) to discuss/debate the role of culture and how it humiliates girls by the virtue of being girls and makes them subservient to their male counterparts;
- Hearing from visitors who want to talk to the girls to either inform them about something or to encourage them and be a positive role model for them.
Facts about Gender Issues in Tanzania [click here]
- According to our local teachers, Tanzanian school children receive little or no formalized sexual education in school (2017).
- 18% of married women in Tanzania are married to men with more than one wife. This is much less common among educated women, urban women, and young women (Tanzania Bureau for Statistics (2016), p. 87).
- 32% of rural teenage girls and 19% of urban teenage girls in Tanzania are pregnant or have already given birth (Tanzania Bureau for Statistics (2016), p. 110).
- Tanzania has a de facto policy of expelling all pregnant girls from school and refusing to allow them to return (BBC, 2017). Furthermore, numerous cases of forced pregnancy tests have been observed in secondary schools (Center for Reproductive Rights, 2013). Around 8,000 girls drop out of school due to pregnancy in Tanzania each year (Human Rights Watch, 2017).
- 10% of women aged 15-49 in Tanzania have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM)(WHO International Fact Sheet #241), though 95% of Tanzanian women say the practice should be permanently abolished (Population Reference Bureau, 2017, p. 7; p. 10).
Club Resources [click here]
If you are thinking about starting a Girls Empowerment Club of your own, or you are just curious about what kind of materials we use in our clubs, here are a few of our favorites that can be shared here without copyright infringement. The first is a TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an author from Nigeria whose stories and speeches we love to discuss at our clubs.
Below that are two bilingual (English-Swahili) resource books on puberty by Dr. Marni Sommers, who has given us permission to use her work and whose other books can be found at her remarkable nonprofit Grow and Know.
Below that are two bilingual (English-Swahili) resource books on puberty by Dr. Marni Sommers, who has given us permission to use her work and whose other books can be found at her remarkable nonprofit Grow and Know.
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Resource book on girls' puberty:
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Resource book on boys' puberty:
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We also have a number of other educational resources that we use in our Girls' Clubs, including a comic book adaptation of We Should All be Feminists, posted and available for download on our FREE ONLINE LIBRARY page!
VIDEO: This meeting in March, 2022 marked the beginning of The Kesho Fund's shift to supporting individual Girls Empowerment Clubs at several secondary schools in Mwanza, Tanzania to supporting a Girls Empowerment Clubs Network throughout the city! Teacher and student representatives from 11 clubs attended and shared their input on how best to start and maintain a successful afterschool Girls Empowerment Club.
How You Can Help
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This project belongs to the Kesho Fund's Gender Equity Program. You can support the Kesho Fund's Gender Equity Program by using this PayPal-protected "Donate" button:
How will my money be used? [click here]
This project belongs to the Kesho Fund's Gender Equity Program. Donations will be divided between this Girls' Club project and the other closely-related projects within our Gender Equity Program. Any funds beyond what this program can use effectively (current budgets on our Projects page) will spill over into our general use fund. How much should I donate? [click here]
Our suggested donation for the Gender Equity Program is $10-30 per month. Donating monthly helps us to make accurate plans for the future and maximize our impact. Every $5 in the Girls' Clubs budget can provide 1-2 girl with a resource book on women's health (to keep) and provide about 10 girls with clean drinking water during club hours for the month. Are there any other ways I can help? [click here]
Do you have a skill set or resource that you think could benefit this project? If so, please contact us at [email protected] to be put in touch with the project leader. |
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Project Photo Gallery
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About the Project Leader
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The Leader for this project is Oliver Kimathi, who also serves as Mwanza Outreach Coordinator on our Board of Directors. [click here]
Oliver Kimathi is the head of Bujingwa Secondary in Mwanza, Tanzania as well as the supervisor for her school English club and an executive member of the Tanzanian English Language Teachers Association Mwanza chapter (TELTA Mwanza). Oliver received her certificate from Butimba Teachers College, her BA from Open University of Tanzania, and her Post-Graduate Degree in Education (PDGE) from the University of Dar es Salaam. Oliver has been leading girls' empowerment clubs in Mwanza since 2016 and is widely seen as a leader and a role model at her school and in her community. |
Project Budget Details
Intended Project Budget: $75 per month
Clubs Currently Supported: 10
Our Gender Equity Program is currently accruing $75 per month, which is split between this Girls' Empowerment Clubs Project and our Sanitary Pads Manufacturing Project (Updated May 1, 2022).
Clubs Currently Supported: 10
Our Gender Equity Program is currently accruing $75 per month, which is split between this Girls' Empowerment Clubs Project and our Sanitary Pads Manufacturing Project (Updated May 1, 2022).
Regular Expenses [click here]
Monthly Budget Components:
- Educational Materials: Flip charts, markers, notebooks, pens, and printed books and pamphlets on women's health
- Safe Drinking Water: Most students drink unpurified tap water, which can spread deadly diseases such as cholera. This money is used to boil water in a tank ahead of time for students to drink from with their own bottles
Wish List [click here]
The Wish List comprises items that this project could benefit from but which don't fit into the project's regular budget. If you would like to sponsor our purchase of one of these items, please contact [email protected] to discuss how we can make it happen together.
- These clubs could really use a projector and speaker ($500) to incorporate videos and online readings into their lessons.
- Oliver also wants to hold a gender equity seminar ($200) that would involve her inviting teachers and students from other schools nearby to learn about her girls' empowerment clubs and how/why to start their own. The budget would cover transportation for up to 100 attendees, drinking water, snacks, and paper handouts.