At 4 p.m. on October 11th, all 104 Daraja students met in the patio for a special forum in honor of International Day of the Girl. One student from each wrote a speech about a specific topic:
Zaituna (F1) : Why are girls important?
“Girls have a big role in their community,” she said. “The girl who is studying to be somebody important in the society is the same girl that will be a mother.” Girls, she said, are expected to one day bear children and run a household, but they also have rights that they might not be aware of. “I have the right to read and learn and achieve my goals and dreams. I dream of being a surgeon. My goal is to go back to my community and change my community.”
Charity (F2): What types of challenges do girls face?
Charity derived her list both from her own experiences back home in the Eastern Province of Kenya and from discussing problems other Daraja girls had seen. Problems that Kenyan girls face, said Charity, include poverty (which would prevent a girl from going to school), traditional practices (like early marriages and female circumcision), and peer pressure to do drugs, which could cause a girl to drop out of school. Charity said that one of the biggest problems is that girls often have a bad attitude toward school, because they believe education is only for boys, and therefore they will not work hard in pursuing an education. Charity, however, attended a mixed-gender school prior to Daraja where the teachers encouraged students to pursue their educations, because education is an equal right of boys and girls.
Mercy (F3): How can girls overcome these challenges?
Mercy focused on four character traits that are vital, she says, to overcoming these challenges:
– Being positive-minded: The world, Mercy said, is at once both positive and negative, but “as girls we have to take a step and live on the positive side of the world.” If girls can stay positive, problems seem smaller and thus will be easier to overcome. It can be hard to stay positive – “It takes energy because not all situations are favorable to us.” But, she explained, deciding to be positive is a commitment that takes energy. “It’s something you decide to do,” she said, and explained that someone might decide they don’t want to be late to class, so they exert effort everyday to take steps to ensure that they won’t be late to class.
– Being hopeful: In addition, girls must be hopeful, in order to have faith in themselves and the goals they can achieve. Achieving goals is a journey, and having hope directs the journey, explained Mercy.
– Having perseverance: Perseverance is also indispensable – “Perseverance shows society that we don’t give up,” said Mercy. “Then we convince them that we are capable of doing things they think we can’t do.”
– Being courageous: Mercy defined courage as the state of being brave and explained that it is crucial to girls. She said that women have progressed–making strides in education and the workplace–and that women couldn’t have become, for example, politicians or leaders without courage, because courage allows girls to “take on tasks that seem hard.”
Nasibo (F4): What does the future look like for girls? Anything is achievable with hope.
Hope is an expectation, according to Nasibo. It’s a belief that something good will happen. She, like Mercy, said that hope can lead to a better future. For example, if a girl can be hopeful about gaining an education, she can pursue her dreams and empower herself. She related this to Daraja’s WISH class (Women of Integrity, Strength, and Hope), and explained that empowered and hopeful women have positioned themselves for a bright future. Nasibo said that having hope can be difficult. “Sometimes it’s hard to have hope if there is no one you can share your stress with,” she said. When she was in Class 8 back home, she had no hope of going to high school, and her future, she was sure, ended after Class 8. However, when she was given the opportunity to attend Daraja, she was able to “take an extra step to make my future brighter.”
The Daraja girls gathered based on the regions that they came from– Northeast, Southwest, Southwest, Northwest, or Central Kenya. Drawing from their own experience, each regional group interspersed the four speeches with presentations regarding the three biggest issues girls face in their region and solutions to overcoming those challenges. Their work is outlined below:
| Region | Challenges | Solutions |
Northeast Kenya |
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| Region | Challenges | Solutions |
Southeast Kenya |
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| Region | Challenges | Solutions |
Southwest Kenya |
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| Region | Challenges | Solutions |
| Northwest Kenya |
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| Region | Challenges | Solutions |
Central Kenya |
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Following the final speech, the girls broke into their families – each family contains one girl from each form – and in addition to discussing what they had learned, they each told their family members what they loved about one another. Daraja cofounder Jenni Doherty closed the forum by encouraging the girls to lie in bed that night and reflect on the reasons their Daraja families love them because, explained Jenni and the girls in unison, “Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate but that we are powerful beyond measure.”
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