Celebrating a Step Forward for Kenyan girls

11 girls convened for tea at the Just One Person office this week. We are celebrating each girls success in passing the Kenyan Comprehensive Exam, which they took after graduation.

One of the highlights of the tea, for me at least, was having strawberry ice cream! We bought it at a nearby supermarket and raced to the office on a motorbike to eat it before it melted. It tasted so good, of course its made from really fresh cream and packed with calories...

The results of the Exam are used to determine where they can pursue further education and which field they have qualified to study. 4 girls have qualified for the University. 2 of the highest scoring will qualify for government assistance. The other two can attend the University if they can afford it.

The remaining seven can attend either junior college or take classes that will qualify them for junior college in the future. Faith and Razoha scored very high and it will be so gratifying to follow their progress from this point forward.

One really revealing fact about how unique these results are is that only 9 or the 11 girls in JOP have moms who graduated from high school.

Self help groups are an integral part of Kenyan society and have formalized procedures for their formation. The guest speaker at the tea was a woman from the Social Services and Community Development Department who informed the girls about how they could come together and form their own group. Once they have registered a group, they will be eligible for continuing counseling from the Department as they develop their projects and learn about entrepreneurship. They'll also be able to take a small loan from the Government's Youth Fund that they can use to start their own project.

The girls were thrilled to learn about the opportunity and met shortly after the social worker left to decide about forming a group. They voted unanimously to form a group which they named "Just One Person Pioneer Group". These are the officers they elected to lead them. They named three activities which they will begin with; bead making, braiding hair and the mushroom project.

Self help groups are taken very seriously here and I feel confident that all the girls will be active participants. But more importantly they will be able to put into practice the skills they learned from the Just One Person life skills and entrepreneur classes they've attended the last three years. They'll be challenged to work together as a group; to communicate openly, to follow the leadership of someone other than a teacher or parent, to allocate duties and do their part in making the group successful, to learn about running a business and record keeping and finally, managing their own finances and start saving. This will be the ultimate test in how well JOP has prepared them to chart their own futures.