Speeches Shim
Last updated: October 08, 2021
By: Josephine Kiruku (Feed the Future Livestock Market Systems Activity) and Alyssa Mesich (USAID Kenya and East Africa)
In northern Kenya, girls face a myriad of challenges from forced marriage and early pregnancies to gender-based violence and dropping out of school to care for family members. Most girls are from pastoralist families and many don’t feel like they are in control of their own lives. They follow traditional power structures and suffer from gender-based inequalities in terms of chores, school, and livelihoods.
In 2006, violence erupted on the hills of Mount Elgon in western Kenya. Thousands of people were left displaced, causing the formation of the Sabaot Land Defense Force, a local militia to fight for land rights. The militia injured, killed, maimed, and sexually assaulted women and girls opposed to the tactics employed by the militant group. The Kenyan Defense Forces quelled the insurgency with a similar level of violence, forcing ex-militia youth to flee into the forest in fear of their lives.
Conservationists globally were elated following the announcement by Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) that the rhino population in Kenya had record births and zero deaths from poaching in 2020. When the pandemic began, there was fear that the decline in tourism would lead to an increase in wildlife poaching.
In 2019, Benson was among 100 young people selected — who have demonstrated leadership in various fields — to participate in a four-weeks intensive training under the United States’ Young Afrian Leaders Initiative (YALI) Regional Learning Center (RCL) in East Africa. The YALI RLC offers training in business and entrepreneurship, civic leadership, and public management tracks.
Since people in hard-to-reach areas have the perception that modern contraceptives such as the birth control pill are impractical, the Turkana County Department of Health and USAID’s Afya Timiza program joined forces to introduce a simpler tool for spacing childbearing: cycle beads.
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