Kuwa kali kwa sababu wasichana wanaweza!

On the 13th of Feb I attended a NGO meeting that some fellow health volunteers in the region organized. It was regarding HIV/AIDS and what we can do to help the NGOs promote their organization and to help them with teaching prevention to citizens. The other facet was to help people who have HIV/AIDS learn useful skills..this is where I can help..one of the useful skills they want to teach is computer skills in order to help people with this disease get jobs. They want to build a computer lab in mjini in order to teach these skills. I hope that we can do it and I definitely will give any knowledge I have to make this happen.

But the 13th of Feb brought a topic I was totally excited about and knew I could help with: Girls Empowerment Conference. The health volunteers wanted to get the girls around them preferably in Form 1 or Standard 7 (like 6th or 5th grade) to come to a venue to learn about life skills. They plan on doing this in June and I offered the idea as the institute as a place where we can have it. They want to teach them about careers, life skills, and their bodies and HIV/AIDS (many girls in poverty resort to getting money by other ways). We can also let them play computer games as many of these girls probably have very little access to computers. I have spoken to various women professors at the institute and they are excited about the idea and willing to help. My neighbor is one of these women and she is one of 2 female professors that attended a conference on how to counsel young girls so I can definitely see her having an impact. The director of studies (DOS) is also a woman and she is excited to help to get more females interested in math. She feels that math is the simplest of sciences and most gals feel like it is hard but if you can tell them it is not that hard and make exciting activities you can gain their interest. We were talking about involving female students at the institute in these activities in order to let the young girls see girls that they can relate to like themselves. I have written a letter to the principal to request use of the facility and hostels and I think the response will be positive.

Also those two professors and I were talking about starting a women's group here at the institute beginning with a study skills and mentorship session during orientation week to retain female students at the institute- kind of like SWE or WISE. Also about having female students and professors going to local secondary schools in the area to show them that girls can be scientists and that science is fun in order to attract girls to enroll in the institute.

The DOS showed me some research she did on the number of women entering the institute. Apparently they started offering a short course to people before attending the institute to teach people math skills if their math was poor. If they pass the course then they may be accepted at the institute. She was showing me that because of this course there are more female students here, but because some can't afford it they were trying to get some scholarships so they can allow these females to attend this course for free. I am so excited for this positive response from various teachers here. I feel like this will be a sustainable activity because there is this interest and motivation.

I am doing my little part in trying to befriend the various female students around here..though they aren't as talkative to me as the male students are. Hopefully having cooking parties and running with these girls will let them open up to me more. As we pound up those hills and they start to quit because they are tired the Anita Hitler in me (my former running partner Elena G has coined the Anita Hitler nickname in endearment of course :) ) tells them "Kuwa kali kwa sababu wasichana wanaweza!"...be fierce because girls can! :)