We started this project in 2015, with the ambition to empower women and girls in the Maasai community. Since then we have been able to bring more than 300 girls to Naningoi Girls School, where they receive a quality education.
After its establishment in the year 1999, Naning’oi used to be a center where girls flourished acting both as a rescue center and boarding school for young Maasai girls in Mosiro, Kajiado County in Kenya. It is the only female-focused center in a 500 Square kilometer radius.
In 2009, funding started to decline and in 2014 responsibility for the institution was formally handed over to the Kenyan government. Naning’oi was soon on the brink of closure. Enrollment had fallen 5x to below 100. In 2017, women of the community, led by Selina Nkoile (a Naning’oi alumnus), stepped in to try and save the center. Enrollment is back up to ~350, and growing. Yet Naning’oi’s future is far from certain.
Nashipai Maasai Community Project seeks to rehabilitate and restore Naning’oi to guarantee its future so that it can give over 800 more Maasai girls from Mosiro who are out of school opportunities to access free and quality education. Our aims are to empower women and girls, decrease violence against women and children, stop Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and child marriage.
In the immediate term, we seek to strengthen security, sanitation and healthcare of the rescue centre (Naning’oi). Security is still precarious for the girls. We have girls that have ran away from child marriage, who are always under constant threat of their ‘husbands’ or families returning to kidnap them away from their homes. Regrettably, this happened in June 2018 to 11-year-old Nankini . Nankini had run away to Naning’oi a day before her planned wedding. Three days later, her mother and step-mother stormed the school with machetes and abducted her. Nankini was handed over to her supposed ‘husband’, who raped her before she could be rescued by the Naning’oi team and taken back to the school.
Child marriage is illegal in Kenya, yet there is no police presence where Naning’oi is located. The community takes law into its own hands; and the rights of girls unfortunately does not take great importance (although that is slowly, positively, changing).
In the medium term, other facilities at Naning’oi need expansion and renovation (most buildings have not been renovated for decades). We would also like to be able to provide professional trauma treatment for runaway girls.
In the longer term, Naning’oi wants to expand its outreach programme to raise awareness and change conceptions of women’s education and empowerment. We are building our grassroots campaigns. If you educate a girl, she will know her rights and have the confidence to stand up for them. She will choose who and when to marry, she will have fewer, healthier and better educated children than the previous generation, her daughters won’t go through FGM or other harmful practices.
We are also introducing concepts of permaculture and sustainable agriculture around Narok and Kajiado counties to teach the women sustainable agriculture. This is necessary as the increasing frequent droughts are making the nomadic pastoralism tradition of the Maasai unsustainable. These schemes will not only empower the women, but also to provide a vital source of food and nutrition security. Income – generating activities, such as bead work, tailoring and carpets and basket weaving will help the women support their families and make it possible for their daughters and sons to go to school.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the World.”
What We've Achieved
We have rescued over 300 girls from harmful cultural practices and brought them to school
Renovated and equipped one dormitory so as to host the ever - increasing population of the girls.
Introduced a school shamba (garden) that will subsidize the cost of food as well as a source for more diverse food and nutrients
Done sensitization meetings and community dialogues on issues of young people, sexual reproductive health and rights, girls and women rights and education as tool for sustainable development.
Fundraising and resource mobilization through friends to get funds which we use to buy food, books, sanitary facilities for the girls as well day - to - day running of the school.