Workshops for Women

Life Skills Workshops for Women

MGEF's Life Skills Workshops are open to the mothers of students to reinforce the lessons taught to the girls. The mothers will learn about the detrimental impact of certain cultural practices to women’s health, including early pregnancy, which causes fistula, and FGM, which contributes to increased mortality both to the mother and child during childbirth, and sometimes death of the girl as a result. It is still widely believed among Maasai women and men that a girl is not a woman until she has been circumcised.

The mothers will also be taught how HIV is spread, and how to protect themselves. They will be made aware of cultural practices that contribute to early pregnancy of their daughters. In the Maasai culture, children are not allowed to stay in their mother’s house when their father is present once they reach a certain age, as young as nine years old. So, they are on their own with no supervision, and they sleep in a separate house within the manyatta.

In addition, girls are not told how one becomes pregnant. This combined lack of supervision and ignorance make girls highly vulnerable to becoming pregnant. The workshops will include discussion of possible solutions to this problem, such as having the children stay with a relative, or adding an extra rooms onto their house, one for boys and one for girls so that their activities can be monitored.

Practical Workshops

MGEF is working to offer workshops to women that provide practical skills that can improve the health, nutrition, and economic well-being of their families. These include nutrition, agriculture and drip irrigation, and microbusiness.