Our Partners – The Girl Child Network

Photo: Girls Football team form Ilmgarooj primary school, Kajiado, taking part in the 2009 Football Tournament organised by GCN as part of the child rights and anti FGM campaign.

The Girl Child Network (GCN) is an umbrella membership organisation that is committed to advancing the rights of girls in Kenya. GCN was established in 1995 as a follow up of the Beijing Platform for Action and implementation of Article 12, The Girl Child.

GCN’s mission is to advocate, promote and protect the rights of the girl child through advocacy, networking and capacity building of stakeholders.

The GCN engages at all levels, from school, community and local levels, to regional and the international arena, in order to promote the rights of children, especially girls, to access education. In addition to the lobbying and advocacy work, the GCN is also implementing a schools sanitation programme in Kajiado district, a Maasai area, south of Nairobi, providing water and sanitation for 37 schools and sanitary towels to over 2,500 girls.

Background

GCN began to implement projects in schools in Kajiado as a practical response to research findings published by GCN in 2004 - The Status of Gender Equity and Equality in Free Primary Education in Kenya. This study analyzed the status of gender equity and equality in the Free Primary Education sector in Kenya. One of the objectives was to find out the impact that the Free Primary Education initiative had on the enrolment of girls and also to assess the status of gender equality in the schools. The findings revealed that as much as enrolment of girls had increased, the number of boys was still significantly high as compared to that of the girls particularly in the upper classes. Girls were also disadvantaged in relation to retention, performance and transition in school in comparison to their boy counterparts. Among the significant contributing factors to this status, was lack of hygienic sanitary towels to manage girls’ menstruation and a lack of gender friendly sanitation facilities in schools. Harmful cultural practices such as early marriage and female genital mutilation particularly among the pastoralists’ communities were also contributing factors to the low levels of girls’ participation in education.

In response to the gaps identified in the research, GCN designed the Kajiado school programmes that aimed to enhance gender friendly and safe learning environment for girls and boys in primary schools through the provision of gender friendly sanitation facilities and elimination of negative cultural practices that negate the process of girls attaining their right to education.

Kajiado Schools and Capacity Building Programmes

The main goal of the Aidlink – GCN 3 year programme is to improve access to and participation in primary education for young girls through the provision of appropriate sanitation facilities and sanitary towels in 37 primary schools in Kajiado district, Kenya. The programme is supported by Irish Aid.

The programme is making excellent progress towards its objectives - the construction of sanitation facilities such as water tanks and girl friendly latrines has improved participation of girls and boys in education; enrolment of girls and boys in schools in Kajiado has already increased by 25%. 30 girls who had dropped out of school have re-entered and are now participating in school activities.

The wider school community has also been sensitised on the importance and use of sanitary towels and a year’s supply of sanitary towels has been distributed to over 2,500 girls in 37 schools in Kajiado district. The sanitary towel distribution is accompanied by a comprehensive awareness raising intervention dealing with issues relating to sexuality/adolescence, hygiene and the rights of the child.

The advocacy component of the programme involves lobbying the Government of Kenya to adopt a policy of free provision of sanitary towels as part of the free primary schools programme nationwide. The GCN also collaborates with the private sector (Proctor & Gamble and Barclays Bank) for the nationwide distribution of sanitary towels. GCN co-chairs the National Sanitary-towels Steering Committee with the Ministry of Education (which was established as a result of GCN lobbying). The committee continues to lobby for bigger budgetary allocation for sanitary towels in the national budget of the government of Kenya.

The 3 year Institutional Capacity Building programme in the Girl Child Network aims to strengthen the capacity of the 312 GCN members and 15 members of the secretariat in designing, implementation and management of sustainable development programs. In Year 1, members were equipped with necessary skills on resource mobilization specifically for income generating activities.

Child Protection training has also been rolled out with 40 GCN members being trained as trainers and a further 168 partners from GCN chapters trained on child protection and the development of child protection policies. Members have established co-coordinating committees to oversee reporting and referral of cases of abuse of children and this has made the organizations in the chapters inclusive, sensitive and child friendly and it has also raised the consciousness towards child protection.

Aidlink and the Girl Child Network

Aidlink and the GCN have been working together since 2003 on a number of projects focused on the areas of education and on the eradication of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). We are currently implementing a 3 year Irish Aid funded Kajiado Schools Project and an Institutional Capacity Building Programme across the network. The Girl Child Network is now one of Aidlink’s key local partner organisations in Kenya and Aidlink staff regularly visit the Girl Child Network’s offices and its programme sites to monitor the progress of activities and to engage in strategic planning. Aidlink also encourages and facilitates reciprocal visits by the Director of the Girl Child Network Ireland to meet with key Irish donors and discuss GCN’s plans and programmes.

Impact

An Independent Evaluation of the Girl Child Network from 2003-2007, revealed that the organisation had achieved all its main programme objectives and its interventions were very successful. A particular highlight is the sanitary towel campaign (now part of the Kajiado Schools Programme). The sanitary towel campaign distributed sanitary towels to 600,000 girls over the period 2006-2008 and has become a successful national and international campaign, attracting support from the private sector (e.g. Proctor and Gamble) and international governments.

Photo: Girls at Olosho-Oibor Primary School, Kajiado, November 2009.