Finding relief in raising confident generation of girls
By Imou Eparis, October 2, 2023Atieno Oketch grew up knowing helping others was a normal thing people did.
“I grew up seeing my parents, especially my dad helping others. I grew up with orphans since my dad works for an orphanage. So from an early age, I thought that is how you make a difference in the community— by supporting orphans. Later, I was exposed to other ways I can impact our communities,” Atieno shared.
In 2017, Atieno started her humanitarian work, volunteering as an assistant graduate under a government initiative. The initiative brought together fresh graduates and later sent them out as volunteer teachers in counties away from their own. Atieno found herself in Samburu County.
“After Samburu, I went to serve at Dadaab in Garissa as a volunteer humanitarian teacher. I initially went to teach English as a second language in the camp. The programme focused mostly on young people and women. I was helping them learn the basics of English. I then morphed and grew into serving high schoolers. This, I did for four years,” Atieno says.
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Atieno, who spent most of her adult life away from home was finally heading back. It was during the pandemic that she got to see the challenges women in her community faced.
Combating teen pregnancies
“Having been exposed to the humanitarian world made me want to replicate the same thing back home. I have been passionate about women for the longest time. I had served women in different capacities, but doing this for my home county was different. I got to learn more about the challenges that girls face in Homa Bay County just from being home after being away for so long,” Atieno said.
“I knew there was a need, but I didn’t know how deep the need was or how bad the situation was. I owe it to Covid-19 because it opened my eyes,” she shares.
Atieno, hence, founded the Atieno Oketch Foundation.
Homa Bay is one of the regions in the country that has high HIV/Aids prevalence and high number of teenage pregnancies. The 2022 Kenya National Demographic Health Survey puts Homa Bay among the top five in teenage pregnancies, with 23 per cent of teenage girls being expectant mothers.
“We still have high HIV and early pregnancy rates and this all goes back to the poverty levels and the lack of information that exists within the county. We are keen on starting small to eliminate early pregnancies. We do this by mentoring and educating the girls.
Power of self-actualisation
We discovered that these girls are taken advantage of by men who promise them basic commodities, such as sanitary towels. You will find that a girl comes from a poor family. The mum is probably the sole breadwinner who cannot provide food and worry about providing sanitary towels at the same time.
So the girls go out and find someone who can meet their needs. They want to feel accepted. They want to belong. One of the things that we want to urgently address is this loophole. We provide sanitary towels for these girls for a start,” shares Atieno.
Atieno and her team do far more than provide sanitary towels. “We work on building self-confidence and awareness so no one takes advantage of them. It doesn’t matter where you come from, whether you are from a poor background and can’t afford certain things.
“If you know who you are and you get to a point of self-actualisation, then nobody can take advantage of you easily. For now, we are focusing on bridging the gaps that exist in the menstrual health space in Homa Bay County. We hope to rope in men because we acknowledge that we cannot do this without their support. We are already doing that a little though,” says Atieno.
Not all good intentions are met with open arms. Atieno shares some setbacks she and her team have faced while carrying out her work. “Our work is based deep in the village. If you go to the village and tell people you want to meet their girls, the first thing they will think of is that you want to indoctrinate their children.
“We received questions, such as, why do you want to meet our girls and not our boys? What do you want to tell them? Initially, during our meet-ups some of the parents accompanied their girls, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s good to come and see what your girls are doing—what we are sharing with them.
“It took a lot of time for the community to accept that we just wanted to make a difference in these girls’ lives. That we are not in any way trying to indoctrinate their girls,” Atieno recalls.
Other challenges faced, include following up on the girls, especially those who were in boarding school.
“It’s way easier to follow up with the girls in day school because they are available when we need to meet them than the girls in boarding schools.
“Communication is not always easy for us, but so far so good. Raising funds hasn’t been easy either. Our period care packages have soap, panties, and sanitary towels, but there are months when we have only provided the girls with sanitary towels because we were stretched.
“However, we have managed even amidst the challenges. We have soldiered on,” Atieno says.
Future prospects
Atieno hopes that one day her foundation will reach a point of influencing laws
“One of our main goals is to get to a point where we can actually influence laws that will allow every single girl in this country to easily access sanitary towels. We can do what we can in our own little way, but if the laws in the country do not change, then it’s such a slow growth.
Also, as an organisation, we really hope to get to a point where we can comfortably provide and produce locally made, good-quality sanitary towels and make them accessible to every single girl around us and in the country. In the next three years, we hope to impact more girls.
To churn out confident women who know that they have a responsibility to impact their counties or their society in general. We hope to advance our operations and scale higher beyond Homa Bay,” Atieno says in conclusion.