Our Work
The Trust’s priority has always been to provide bursaries for bright but impoverished girls to attend secondary school. We recruit students at Form 1 entry and continue to sponsor them until they have completed Form 4 and sat their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE). The majority of students are selected from the nominees from our associated TOWS groups. We also take on some hardship cases from those who apply directly to us, or on recommendation from their schools or our Coordinator. Though the great majority of our students are girls, we also support a few boys from our TOWS groups. In 2017, we supported 25 girls and 3 boys at Secondary School, one girl at Primary school and helped 2 students taking University courses.
Why prioritise the education of girls
Changing traditional attitudes to women is a long-term process and involves huge shifts in cultural values. Kurian society was – and still is – patriarchal, with a man claiming absolute rule in his homestead and directing the work and movements of his wife or wives and children. Historically, women had very little freedom. And today, in these farming households, investment in a daughter’s education is often seen as a waste because it entails the loss of a daughter’s labour while at school and delays her marriage.
With primary education lasting 8 years, girls do not begin secondary school until they are of 15 or 16 – that is of marriageable age - and most are over 20 when they finish and are free to marry. Only then will her family receive bridewealth cattle, the payment from the groom’s family that legitimises the marriage. Once married she belongs to her husband’s family. Educating boys on the other hand is a direct and enduring investment in the household economy and the farm that they will later inherit.
It is a measure of the way education is becoming generally valued – and attitudes are changing - that many families now are working hard to educate their daughters as well as their sons, despite the economic and cultural bias.
A recent BBC documentary (Extreme Wives, 11/11/17) has highlighted the issue of female circumcision or FGM among the Kuria. We believe that educating girls gives them the power to choose their own future. Change is already apparent in that many Kuria these days reject circumcision for their daughters. In the past, this possibility was largely restricted to Seventh Day Adventists and the educated elite but it is becoming more widespread.
Education is here seen as a definite alternative to FGM and early marriage, qualifying girls for a professional life, and the freedom to choose when and whom to marry.
This page is in progressl
Why prioritise the education of girls
Changing traditional attitudes to women is a long-term process and involves huge shifts in cultural values. Kurian society was – and still is – patriarchal, with a man claiming absolute rule in his homestead and directing the work and movements of his wife or wives and children. Historically, women had very little freedom. And today, in these farming households, investment in a daughter’s education is often seen as a waste because it entails the loss of a daughter’s labour while at school and delays her marriage.
With primary education lasting 8 years, girls do not begin secondary school until they are of 15 or 16 – that is of marriageable age - and most are over 20 when they finish and are free to marry. Only then will her family receive bridewealth cattle, the payment from the groom’s family that legitimises the marriage. Once married she belongs to her husband’s family. Educating boys on the other hand is a direct and enduring investment in the household economy and the farm that they will later inherit.
It is a measure of the way education is becoming generally valued – and attitudes are changing - that many families now are working hard to educate their daughters as well as their sons, despite the economic and cultural bias.
A recent BBC documentary (Extreme Wives, 11/11/17) has highlighted the issue of female circumcision or FGM among the Kuria. We believe that educating girls gives them the power to choose their own future. Change is already apparent in that many Kuria these days reject circumcision for their daughters. In the past, this possibility was largely restricted to Seventh Day Adventists and the educated elite but it is becoming more widespread.
Education is here seen as a definite alternative to FGM and early marriage, qualifying girls for a professional life, and the freedom to choose when and whom to marry.
This page is in progressl