We have collaborated with is a non-partisan, multisectoral development initiative with good collaboration with local government and a long standing relationship with the current sitting President Samia Hassan. This is an important factor as the previous administration outlawed teenage girls to attend school if they were found to be pregnant, the current president has repealed this ruling allowing thousands of teenage girls to return to school without restriction. Interlinking with government bodies is a key element to their ability to provide cross agency support without coming across bureaucratic issues as well as resistance from conservative opposers who do not support the change to cultural practice.

What they do:

● A fully functional health centre and clinic

• They employ a doctor, laboratory technician, pharmacist and nurse providing medical services in general medicine.
• There is a small 6 bedded ward which is oversubscribed and low resourced for what they are actually able to provide to their patients
• There is a small delivery room with a non functional incubator, autoclave
• There is a small, well run laboratory providing HIV testing, STI testing, pregnancy testing and other various functions. There is an out of date centrifuge that needs to be updated.

● Healthcare education and awareness:

• They go out to hard to reach Maasai villages to provide mobile clinics for expectant mothers, new mothers and women who have health complications from female genital mutliation (FGM)
• They service pregnant women and new mothers in the Maasai catchment area through their reproductive and child health service
• They provide a Youth Friendly Service which is a department teenage girls can privately receive support, treatment and/or contraceptive/family planning services

● They have started a women’s empowerment group aimed at eliminating female genital mutilation practice from rural villages.

• The group has stopped or saved over 200 girls from being mutilated
• They provide a safe haven and medical support to women and girls who have suffered severe complications after giving birth due to FGM i.e severe tears, emergency caesarians, hypvolaemia, fistula’s, psychological trauma.
• The group has convinced over 37 FGM practitioners to stop the practice and become advocates to end the practice
• The former practitioners now form a group of over 270 tribal members including 30 men. A huge cultural shift and movement.
• The group now employs champions in the villages they advocate to end FGM and forced marriage. The champions also help girls who have run away from home after learning they are to be cut or sold into marriage or shunned from their families for refusing.
• The group supports mothers who do not want their daughter to go through generational trauma of FGM or forced marriage by defending and advocating for them when they are harassed or assaulted for helping their daughters escape.
• The group advocates and provides a defensive network for wives who have become advocates and beaten or left homeless by their husbands and in-laws they rely on to live.
• The NGO provides a rescue home for any Maasai girl who needs to flee a situation for the aforementioned reasons. The rescue home can house up to 30 girls providing it’s basic function as a shelter, however it is in serious disrepair and in poor condition. The rescue home has served around 165 girls in a crisis that need rescue and shelter.

The amount of work they provide is all encompassing and vast. The NGO is spread between two main sites as well as informal basis in rural Maasai villages. The main headquarters is mainly made up of a well-functioning healthcare center that provides support, health education and treatment to low income Maasai families and women. This is a very organized and very well thought out program specifically for Maasai girls and women.