Since the beginning of the year, the Maasai Girls Education Fund has added 22 new students, bringing the total number of girls receiving scholarships to 57.
Our focus this year is on preventing early marriages, which predominantly occur in January every year. This past January, there were 35 girls who requested help from MGEF. Through the generous donations of individuals in the US in December, and a grant from the Kenya Community Development Foundation in Nairobi, we were able to help 14 of the 35 girls, ages 12 to 16, by providing scholarships for their education in boarding schools in Kenya. The remaining 8 students we added were from extremely poor families, either orphaned or without fathers, who had dropped out of school because they could not afford school fees.
The practice of "marrying off" young Maasai daughters when they reach puberty is one of the most challenging issues facing Maasai women, challenging because the practice is entrenched in age-old cultural beliefs that are difficult to breach. In these situations, relieving a family of the economic burden of educating a child is not a guarantee that the father will give up his plan for her marriage. But more often than not, it works.
With MGEF's grass roots network, we are able to take action in such cases before it is too late. This year one of the fathers became irate when he learned that his daughter had received a scholarship from MGEF and refused to allow the girl to go to school, insisting that she would be married as planned. But the local MGEF committee representative requested the local chief, the ultimate arbiter of Maasai law, to intervene on behalf of the girl. After reviewing the circumstances, the chief ordered the father to send the girl to school. Circumcised, head shaved, and ready for the marriage ceremony, the girl instead enrolled in school.
This year we were able to prevent only 14 of 35 early marriages, allowing these girls to continue their education, but we are working toward and even higher goal next year. We are now actively planning "a rescue village" to provide refuge for these girls facing forced marriages. With the cooperation of the community, school officials, local chiefs, and the district and national governments, we plan to locate the rescue village next to a public school, so that the girls will be able to continue their education at half the cost of attending boarding schools, or approximately $150 per year. The village will consist of one central building to serve as a dining hall & study hall, while living quarters will consist of traditional Maasai houses built by women in the community. To ensure a healthful environment, MGEF has provided funds to train twenty Maasai women, selected by the community, to build the traditional houses with better lighting and ventilation. These women will, in turn, construct housing for the village, as well as teach other Maasai women what they have learned. We anticipate that the mere existence of the rescue village will have a positive effect on the fathers who traditionally would force their daughters into an early and unwanted marriage. Knowing that the girls now have an option to move to the rescue village should give the fathers further pause.
With partial support from the Bauman Foundation, the law firm of Zelle, Hofmann, Voelbel, Mason & Gette, and individual donors, we have raised nearly one-third of the $15,000 required to begin construction of the village. The rescue village will have a tremendous impact on reducing the number of child marriages. I hope that you will be able to make an additional contribution to support this effort, and if you know others who may be interested in our work, I hope you will send this message to them as well.
