NAJMA: PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENT

“With an education, I can help my family and community.”

Najma attended primary school in the Loita Hills, a remote, rural region of Kenya. She is a determined, vibrant girl who wants to be a judge when she grows up, so that she can help her family. She thinks that all girls need to go to school, because it is the only way they can help their communities.

In 2021, Najma successfully passed her high school entrance exams with high marks and started classes at a girls’ secondary boarding school in July of 2021 with the support of her family and a scholarship from For the Good. As of April 2022, she is starting her 2nd year (10th grade, or Form 2). Typically only one in 15 girls in the region Najma lives graduates from primary school and transfer onto secondary school. Numerous barriers keep them from the classroom as they near adolescence. Primary among these are community traditions that foster FGC and early marriage as a way to ensure a daughter and families’ futures, and a lack of access to an affordable school. There was only one secondary schools in the entire 400 square-mile region she lives; the only high school was a boarding school, which has a $400 annual tuition cost — far above most local families’ means.

Early in 2020, for the first time, eight young Maasai girls - one pregnant, one already a young teenage mother - and ten boys started their lessons in the first affordable day secondary school several hours away from Najma’s home community. Efforts to open schools, enroll out-of-school children, and teach local leaders to speak up for girls' education are beginning to create the change that we, fathers, mothers, girls and communities hope to see happen for girls. Our goal is to work with communities to create a world where Najma can gain the formal education to make her dream become a reality while proudly honoring her Maasai culture, family and community.