Dandelion Kenya Joins The Cause To Ensure Girls In Nakuru Stay In School
Freedom for Girls will only be achieved if they attend school, gain an education and are able to compete for equal opportunities with their boy counter parts in a safe environment that promotes gender equality and respects their human rights. Girls school attendance should be consistent, uninterrupted and they should be in a state of mind in which they can fully engage and participate in order to compete equally. Girls in their adolescence are faced by many challenges that normally lead to the dropping out of school, chief amongst those challenged being lack of sanitary towels. In Kenya 12% of girls who drop out of school is because of lack of sanitary towels.
Girls are forced to engage in commercial sex in exchange for sanitary towels. This is the reason that Dandelion Kenya partners with the Rotary Club of Nakuru to ensure girls can access sanitary towels and stay in school. Dandelion Kenya is Swedish-Kenyan non-profit organization based in Nakuru Kenya working with women and youth in Rift Valley. Dandelion works to ensure access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) information and services for women and girls through comprehensive sexuality education and SRHR advocacy. Dandelion Kenya also works to ensure economic empowerment for youth and women.
In Kenya and other African Countries, girls continue to experience despicable violations of their rights through FGM, early forced marriages, denial of education, sexual and gender based violence. The rotary club of Nakuru works with the community to ensure access to basic needs such as safe and drinking water in the villages and rural areas in Nakuru and also ensure girls can access sanitary towels for them to stay in school. Girls Education has been proven to have a ripple effect in the reduction of maternal mortality, poverty reduction and increased participation in economic, social and cultural life at the community, country level and even global levels.
However this education should also encompass scientific and evidence based information in the form of comprehensive sexuality education to ensure that girls can make informed choices regarding their sexuality and that they can plan their lives accordingly. For adolescent girls lacking sanitary towels and in schools where they are not provided with sexuality education, one can only imagine the stigma a young girl will have to endure in a highly patriarchal and impoverished society and the unfortunate cycle of poverty the girl will be doomed to endure because of the missed school time and the possible impact this might have on her education. This is also likely to predispose her to early child marriage and all the violations girls endure in the society we live.
Dandelion Kenya believes women and girls are the glue of society with youth as not only the future but the NOW. By empowering these groups, we are empowering our societies and informing meaningful change in the world.
