When I was just 5 years old, my parents announced my engagement to my 6-year-old neighbor. “Look, there goes your husband,” they would say to me whenever he passed by. I knew that this was the way things were done in my community, and I knew that girls were valued by how many cows their family would receive as a dowry. But as I got older, I also knew that it was not the future I wanted for myself. I looked at this boy, whose family was even poorer than my own. I looked at the hardships women endured. I looked at this hopeless future in front of me and I said, No way. When I reached age 12, the age at which girls undergo female genital mutilation and get married, it was time for me to take a risk. I loved school and did not want to become a wife and mother at such a young age. If I followed the expected path, my dreams for a different future would end with my circumcision and marriage. I did something no girl in my village had ever done: I negotiated with my father that I would only be circumcised if I was allowed to complete high school. He agreed and, after graduation, I was accepted at a university in the United States. But by then my father was in the hospital, paralyzed. We had sold almost everything to pay for his care, so there was no money for college, especially in the U.S. It took a long time, but I eventually gained the support of my village elders, who helped me raise the money I needed to continue my education. They made me promise to use this education to benefit the community. I went to college in the U.S. and then continued on to complete a Ph.D. in Education. Meanwhile, I founded Kakenya Center for Excellence, a primary boarding school for girls in my village. This was the fulfillment of my promise to the elders. I could think of no better way to benefit my community than by providing a safe, nurturing environment to educate its daughters. Though not everyone thought this was a great idea in the beginning, the school now has 183 thriving students in grades 4-8. They are learning to say no to harmful cultural practices such as FGM and early marriage and to believe in their own dreams for the future: to become doctors, lawyers, pilots, and politicians. This, in turn, is making a difference in the greater community. Parents are seeing that their daughters are smart and capable of becoming leaders. People are beginning to believe that girls are worth more than a dowry of cows. And the girls themselves understand their worth, their rights, and their potential. All they needed was a chance to find their voices and an opportunity to speak up.

Free Falling in Samburu: The Journey to A Safe House On a hilltop near Maralal in northern Kenya, in an empty hut, 11-year-old Eunice sat on her muddy bed covered with cow hide. The only light in the small hut was a bonfire she had made for the kettle. She felt cold, although it was warm and sunny outside. Maybe today is the day that I will run away, she thought. She looked at the bruises on her arm. The ones from last night were fresh and more painful than the others. When she’d refused to “please” her 78-year-old husband, he’d beaten her as she shielded her head with her arms. Only two weeks earlier, her father had circumcised her and then forced her to marry this man. It was getting dark outside. She had to hurry along the narrow path through the woods for almost half an hour to get to the nearest village shop and run back home so she could prepare the evening meal before her husband’s arrival. Five minutes into her walk, she made up her mind. She was actually running before she knew it. Thoughts were racing through her head, as she ran through the woods, into the unknown. Sitting in the little room she has turned into an office and handling the paperwork for Rosilla – the girl she rescued earlier that week – Josephine Kulea reminisced about her own past. When she was 9 years old, every other week, one of her classmates would stop coming to school. One by one they were first circumcised and then married off to men more than 30 to 40 years older than them, many of whom were already married. Kulea was somewhat fortunate. Though she was circumcised, she had the support of her mother, who championed her education and resisted family pressure to marry her off at a young age. She has since helped create the Samburu Girls Foundation, which rescues girls already circumcised or prone to such mutilation. Over 90 percent of the girls in Samburu County go through FGM at a very young age or right before getting married. “[Our work] is very difficult, because there is no political will or support,” said Kulea, whose organization is a member of The Girl Generation. Kulea said that even though the law supports her work, the very traditional community adamantly resists any change in these brutal rituals. Eunice plans to continue her education. Once grown, she said, she will work to put an end to FGM because it brings too much suffering to the Samburu girls. “When I become a powerful woman in [the] future, I will ensure that young girls . . . would go to school,” she said, “and spread the gospel of stopping early marriages and female genital mutilation in Samburu.”

The Girl Generation general website images