Focus Areas
#2 Gender Justice
We seek to pursue a free, fair, and equal society free of gender-based violence and discrimination.
Current & Past Projects
Sauti Kenya - Voice Of Change
SAUTI Kenya is a leadership program designed to strengthen the role of women and youth in advocacy. This initiative works towards building sustainable, county-focused capacity of women-led civic society actors. Our advocacy efforts are centered around four thematic areas, i.e. Climate change, peace security, governance, poverty eradication and health.
Cohort 1: Strengthening the role of women in peace and governance-Kisumu, Nairobi, Mombasa
This was an initiative that worked towards building sustainable county-focused capacity of women-led civic society actors, female student leaders, community influencers, and common interest groups that focus on peace and counter-radicalization for effective promotion of human rights and conflict management in Mombasa County, Kisumu County, and parts of Nakuru County, Kenya. The project was led by a team of women leaders (US embassy program alumni) and like-minded partners with a passion to effect change in Kenya’s governance. The project managed to train 60 grassroots women leaders in effective advocacy and campaigning, advocacy communications, social entrepreneurship & organizational sustainability, and theatre for community engagement. As a result, hundreds of community members were impacted through peace-focused communication and campaigns, short films and theatre.
Cohort 2: Strengthening the role of women in climate change mitigation
The main objective of the project was to work with Kenyan women and communities to address climate change by increasing awareness and use of clean domestic energy in rural Kenya while also offering options for economic advancement and empowerment. The project identified sixty (60) women specifically women who run CBOs, Chama leaders, women in agriculture and farmer associations, and female community influencers in the target counties with potential or engaged in part in effective advocacy efforts in the community and equipped them with skills on effective advocacy and entrepreneurship, specifically the making, use and sale of briquettes as a business for self-reliance by end of the project. 600 women group members through were reached through cascade trainings by the trained leaders on clean energy for domestic use, ensuring 2400 people access to clean energy through the use of briquettes. The project was led by US Kenya Exchange Alumni and was implemented in Kericho, Kakamega and Kisumu counties.
Africa Shelters And Helplines Forum-Nairobi
An annual forum organized in partnership with the Global Network for Women Shelters targeting women’s shelters and gender based violence response helplines. The 2023 forum brought together more than 70 women’s shelters representatives, as well as civil society and government stakeholders such as UN Women, Meta, Centre for Domestic Training and Development (CDTD), COVAW, Usikimye, Wangu Kanja Foundation, the State Department for Gender and the National Government Affirmative Action Fund. The goal of the forum is to create a platform for network building, stakeholder engagement, sharing of experiences, and capacity strengthening on creating stronger support mechanisms/structures for survivors of gender-based violence.
Tunawiri- National Campaign (Digital)
This project was designed to empower communities by advancing gender and social justice in Africa through programmatic and organizational support rendered to community-based organizations’ working to address sexual and gender based violence. The aim was to provide community-based actors with the leadership, and operational and structural support they need in order to maximize their impact. The project was designed in response to the rising cases of gender based violence and human rights violations that occurred during the COVID 19 pandemic.
Some of the project’s achievements include:
- Offering support to grassroots organizations’ working to address police brutality in Kenya due to the rise in cases during COVID 19 response curfew and lockdowns. We co-organized the #EndPoliceBrutalityKe and #BlacklivesMatterKe protests that mobilized more than 600 people in direct nonviolent action. A petition was effectively presented and read in parliament with the security committee committing to present a response. This was done in partnership with Amnesty International (Kenya), Usikimye.
- Mobilized grassroots organizations in the development and presentation of an online petition. The petition received over 1000 signatures and the campaign contributed to commitments by the ministry of education to ensure GBV messaging is incorporated in education curricula. The campaign also included awareness raising and engagement that reached 3 million people on and off social media.
- Developed an online psycho-social support program that offered free counseling to more than three hundred (336) survivors of sexual and gender based violence survivors by working with volunteer counselors.
- Developed a safety planning tool for survivors of domestic violence.
- Updated the sexual and gender based violence service providers database for access to community based organizations to ease the process of referral.
- Assisted member grassroots organizations in crowd funding for key programs. Specifically, the Mathare Social Justice Centre and Defenders Coalition. We raised USD 5,500 to support the bail and fund of activists that were arrested as they marched against police brutality in Kenya.
