Rescue Maasai Girls from Female Genital Mutilation

Protecting Maasai girls from FGM in 2015

Thank you for your going donations!

This report includes the following sections:

1. All 72 girls are still protected
2. Program background
3. Program admin structure including transparency
4. Current updates – summer theater and dormitory funded!
5. Movie in the making about Mary K, the 17 year old leader of the Maasai 72

1. All 72 girls are still protected!

We have just returned from our annual oversight mission to Kenya (July 2015) and we are happy to report that all of the 72 girls we have been protecting from three illegal acts (forced removal from elementary school, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and forced sale into marriage) are still protected.

All 72 of our girls ran away from home on the night they learned they were going to have their clitorises and labia cut out by razor blade and sold into early marriage. The number of cattle exchanged would depend on each girl’s beauty and intelligence. Unaware of what “the cut” would mean for their livelihoods (10% of girls subjected to FGM die before they are 16 and the majority suffer life-long urinary tract disorders not to mention other less-talked-about mental disorders).

 Global Roots has been supporting the rescue home created by our local partner, Carole N, for over three years. Carole N is a proud Maasai woman who was a victim of FGM as a child and made a stand to protect her own three daughters from it.

She took in her first runaway in 2009 and has been working with local law enforcement officials and Maasai chiefs to receive more girls ever since.

 FGM is a crime in Kenya and no police officer or Maasai chief can return a girl to her minyatta (Maasai village) once the girl has sought protection.

2. Program background. In Kenya, most young men are socialized to believe that women are not generally not useful member of society. They learn at a young age that women are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things and definitely should not be leaders.

Women are considered objects and are treated and even traded as such. African men behave according to these practices and this perpetuates violence – leading to to human rights violations.

FGM is a traditionally perpetuated barbaric act which is one of the key element in the cascading impact in the communities. At first, girls between 6 and 12 are mutilated (circumcised) which lead them to think that they are an adult (right of passage) and ready to be married. They then get married, and have children sometimes as early as 14 years old. She then is caught into a life of servitude to an older husband, as a child caretaker and a cattle herder. They are deprived of any kind of education.

 How our program actually works. In short: we pay boarding school fees for the 72 girls we support directly to their boarding schools.

3. Program Administrative structure. Funds are first wired from the USA to Anthony K, Lead Transparency Officer for Global Roots in Nairobi. Before wiring funds onward to eight different boarding schools across the Trans-mara region and Maasai Mara regions, Anthony must establish the “relative need” of each “Maasai 72” by analyzing each girl’s particular situation. Each girl’s need is different based on the relationship we have established with the participating boarding school.

Relative Need. When Global Roots met our local partner Carole N. four years ago, we agreed to start paying a portion of quarterly school fees for the Maasai 72. We were not told, however, that each child was already carrying debts from fees not paid previously.

Severely underfunded at the start, Carole gave each school as little as possible so that she could take more girls in. Ultimately, Carole employed what we have come to call “Carole’s Smokescreen” to maintain control over program finances. She knew that the girls would be rejected and she would be forced to send them home if she admitted she had no idea how she could eventually pay all fees due.

 Without Carole, all of the girls would have been forced to leave school, undergo FGM and be sold into marriage. Ten percent of the 72 girls would have died before the age of 16 — mostly due to the hemorrhaging of their FGM wounds when they are reopened during the birthing process. Those lucky enough to survive would have lost their chance at a high school education. They would birth their first child at 13, suffer from diseases related to their wounds for the rest of their lives.

Carole heard that Global Roots was looking for a local partner to struggle against FGM three years ago. When she learned Global Roots was in the Mara on a service mission, she flagged a taxi down in Kilgoris and drove three hours across the Maasai Mara to meet our Executive Director and discuss a partnership.

It is not uncommon that we do achieve immediate 100% transparency with our partners. We continue to question, cross-reference, validate, and investigate, to get closer to reality. You can imagine how difficult it is to operate such difficult programs with the distance, the language barriers, the regional relationship and cultural dynamics.

We have learned that different schoolmasters allow for different levels of debt. One year ago a schoolmaster who allowed debt was replaced by one who didn’t and five of our girls were immediately expelled.

Fortunately, we had already set up an early warning net which allowed us to successfully intervene and pay the fees before the girls were sent home.

It is our goal to wipe out the debt for the first four of the Maasai 72 who are graduating from high school this fall. None of the schools we deal with allow a child to graduate and take college entrance exams if they have debt.

Our local transparency officer has worked hard to eliminate all admin smoke screens so that we know the situation of each girl.

4. Current Updates

Maasai School Girls sing about the benefit of education to a Maasai Minyatta. On July 5, 2015, Global Roots funded a trip for 10 of the Maasai 72 to sing, dance and act out a play that shows what an educated girl can bring to any Maasai community. The details of this epic journey will be told in our next project report.

The Global Roots summer dormitory. Global Roots currently funds 50% of the boarding school costs for the Maasai 72 and we also help with food and accommodation during the two months of the year when they are not at boarding school.

Unable to return to their parents, the Maasai 72 sleep in a Global Roots funded dormitory in the Kenyan city of Kilgoris during the two months they are not in boarding school.

The next month long vacation is August 2015 and we have already contracted the same dormitory that we used last summer.

Nike employees donate 1.2K. Our executive director Rick M. was interviewed on Nike radio (Chaos) two months ago and managed to raise 1.2K from Nike employees. Along with funds raised from generous donors at Global Giving and a private donor in Portland, OR — we were able to pay all spring fees.

5. Movie in the Making

Mary K. — the documentary. A key element of our new plan is to create a documentary movie that tells the story of Mary Keruta — one of the first Maasai girls to seek protection from Carol N.

Mary is 17 years old and is about to graduate high school with top honors. She is an accomplished athlete (soccer and track), loves to sing and dance (she created a dance and theater group that is composed of nine other members of the Maasai 72) and she has excelled in academics. She is currently the top pupil in her boarding school and plans to attend college with a grant from Global Roots. Mary wants to become a lawyer so that she play a key role in protecting future Maasai girls from FGM.

We are convinced that the true story of Mary’s successful flight from a lifetime of slavery and the lifelong pains of FGM, if told in an uplifting way, will inspire viewers to take action. FGM is illegal in Kenya but not enough is being done to stop it. The Kenyan government relies on whistle blowers inside Maasai communities to locate those parents who mutilate their daughters. We are currently negotiating with the Kenyan government to learn more about whether or not this form of enforcement is actually working. 

100% of the proceeds of our movie will help finance our five year plan to FGM. Like many current plans, ours will include community outreach and education. What makes our plan unique, however, is that it includes a key element of enforcement. Working with local school masters we will create a tracking program that will alert our team when a child goes missing. Working with a coalition of support both inside and outside Kenya, the perpetrators will be arrested, testified and sentenced.

Documentary timeline 

Step one. July 2015. Kickstarter video.

Longtime Global Roots volunteer and board member Patrick F. will make a 2.5 minute “Kickerstarter” with fresh footage taken during our annual oversight and transparency trip to Kenya this summer.

Patrick is the same filmmaker who produced an informative video about the plight of Maasai girls two years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sg9U7HRYeA

Step two. August, 2015 Kickstarter launch

Patrick will work with Executive Director Rick M to edit the documentary into finished form.

Global Roots will then launch a Kickstarter in September of 2015 to raise the $200K we need to produce the film and simultaneously pay off all debt for the Maasai 72 as well as school fees for 2016.

Step three. December 2015. Documentary production.

Patrick will travel back to Kenya with professional documentary maker Chris Parkhurst of Barang Films to make an original documentary about Mary Keruta that we will enter into elite film festivals.

March, 2016 Documentary submission

Our documentary — Mary K. — will help raise awareness about FGM and draw international attention to our fight against it in Kenya.

We trust that the international outcry will further our plan to launch a branding campaign entitled “Mutilaton Free Minyatta” or MFM. Any Minyatta that becomes MFM Certified will be eligible to receive Global Roots education grants.

Thank you for your donations!

We are pleased to report that all of the Maasai 72 remain under the protection of our program.

We have attached an oversight report below so that you can see how we track this project. Our early warning safety net is working. We continue to receive word whenever a Maasai girl is threatened so we are able to take quick action

This report is divided up in three parts.

I. The story of Mary K. Each of the girls we support is a unique and brave girl with a story of her own.

II. Global Roots Declares War Against FGM…included here is our five year plan to end Female Genital Mutilation among the Maasai.

III. Oversight Report.

IV. Early Warning Safety Net.

V. Donation tracking. Read the correspondence between a major Global Roots donor and our Nairobi-based transparency officer, "AK".

VI. Portrait of a Maasai girl by Paige Hval.

Part 1. Mary K. — the second Maasai girl taken in by Carole in 2009. (see photo 1) Mary’s story is told in its entirety below. Funds collected at Global Giving this year will help pay for the boarding school fees of 72 Maasai school girls and the cost of college for the first four graduates of the Maasai 72, including Mary.

We believe that Mary K. will become a leader in the fight to end FGM among the Maasai for all time.

Mary was just 12 when she ran away from home but she knew she had the legal right to attend primary school and that both forced marriage and female genital mutilation are against the law in Kenya.

On the night of her cutting and imminent marriage to man four times her age, Mary ran out of her minyatta and across the Maasai Mara to see the protection of Carole N., a brave Maasai mother of three who risked her own life to create a rescue center for “the Maasai 72”. Globalroots.org remains the only international charity supporting Carole in her work.

The story of Mary K. — YOU WILL FIND IT HARD TO BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING IN THE 21ST CENTURY.

Mary K., age 17 and in her senior year of high school, is from a typical Maasai family, where her father is polygamous with at least 5 wives and a total of 34 children.

Unlike her brothers, Mary K. and two of her sisters were denied an opportunity to continue with their schooling after primary school. The reason? According to Maasai tradition their main duty was to be married off so as to bring further wealth and honor to the family. Education was not considered a priority for these soon-to-be brides. In fact, in the case of Mary, it was already clear she knew too much.

Around this time Mary learned of the activities of Caroline N., a fearless and strong-willed campaigner for the rights of Maasai girls. Caroline happened to be at her local police station a few months earlier when the officer on duty refused to protect another Maasai girl (the first of the Maasai 72) from the threat of FGM. When Carole (an FMG survivor who had refused to let her two daughters suffer the same archaic surgery by razor blade) took the girl into her arms, a thug from the girls tribe beat her.

Carole did not budge. As she was being beaten, she screamed threats at the officer on duty. FGM is a crime in Kenya and the UN considers to be one of the top Human Rights Crimes committed against women in the world.

The officer buckled and gave custody of the girl to Caroline. Word of Caroline’s heroics (and heresy among most Maasai males) spread across the savannah like a giant grass fire.

Mary left her home in the cover of darkness on an epic journey to find Caroline. She wandered across the savannah grassland of the Maasai Mara to a small village where one of the locals happened to know the name of the village where Carole was from.

Mary continued to walk. She did not have shoes. She walked 26 miles until she entered the safety of Caroline’s compound. Three years later, Caroline confided in out ED that she could not turn Mary away.

“I had already taken in two girls and I didn’t know how I could feed them. But there was something in Mary’s eyes that changed my mind.”

Caroline took Mary under her wing at her budding rescue center.

The same year Mary’s elder sister Naomi also managed to escape an attempt to forcibly marry her off, sustaining a serious injury to her foot in the process. Caroline took her in, too. Unfortunately, due to the injury and successive bouts of ill health, Naomi was unable to attend school on a regular basis and ended up dropping two classes behind Mary.

Last year yet another of Mary’s sisters, Elizabeth, who had been taken out of school so as to look after the family’s livestock, was also taken in by the rescue center.

It will be four years since Mary joined Caroline’s home and this year she will sit for her final high school exams. During her time at school she has excelled in both academic and extracurricular activities and she was even appointed “captain of games” games. She is an avid runner and soccer player. Nothing could be more Nike or Mia Hamm than this!

Her favorite subjects include foreign languages, history and “Christianity”. Mary believes that nothing but God could have protected her during her epic plight. 

Mary’s ambition is to become a lawyer so as to ably defend the rights of Maasai women and girls.

The attached portrait was painted by a 16 year old artist Paige H. The painting attracted the interest of the Nike Foundation and 100% of the funds given to the program by Nike went to pay school costs for Mary.  Paige has since painted another

Part II. Global Roots Declares War Against FGM

“War” is a strong word but we feel strongly that it is time to take a different course of action if we truly want to enable our Maasai partners to end FGM among Maasai.

We have come to believe that this human rights crime can’t be stopped without legal enforcement.

The UN and the government of Kenya have declared FGM a crime against humanity that should be punishable by a prison sentence.

If this is true, then why did the chief of a Maasai village agree to meet with a Global Roots film crew to publicly speak out in support of FGM and why did he so readily introduce us to the woman who does the cutting in his village? You can watch this interview in our short film on the subject.

Many authorities claim that FGM has gone into hiding and that it can’t be stopped for this reason. This is not true. FGM is simply not enforced.

Alas, our local hero Carole N. threatened to turn a police officer over to justice when he refused to protect the first of the Maasai 72 in 2009.

We learned from this incident that we have the ear of the local police.

We are now strengthening our ties with local police chiefs and the few Maasai leaders who have sent threatened girls into police protection. As you may or may not know from reading past project reports, the police have been calling the woman we support (Carole Nangeya) for help and she has now taken in 72 girls.

Global Roots does not take girls from their homes. These girls run away on their own at 12 years old when they learn their human rights are about to be violated.

We have formed a union with more than 16 schoolmasters who want to end FGM among the Maasai.

Thank you for your support! Your donations have helped us to keep each of the Maasai 72 protected.

Here is our five year plan to end this archaic tradition once and for all.

Desired outcome: end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) among the Maasai in five years.

Kenyan partners: Carole N. (Maasai mother, FGM survivor, protector of 72 threatened Maasai), Anthony K, Global Roots Transparency Officer (former photographer for Transparency International), Lucy O, manager, Global Roots Kenya, Kenyan School Masters and Regional Police chiefs. Admin support: Global Roots USA.

Strategy: build on past success (72 girls protected from FGM across the Maasai Mara and TransMara regions) by creating “Girls Gardens” at 16 Maasai Elementary Schools. Our garden program will protect an estimated 1,600 Maasai girls from FGM and it will become the talk of Kenya and neighboring Tanzania. A dance troupe composed of 20 of the Maasai 72 will travel from village to village spreading the message “Say no to FGM because the law is with you”. The play heralds the benefits to any Maasai family that opts to not cut their daughters and the prison sentence that awaits those who do.

Key to Success: we have already proven that school masters will partner with us. It’s in their interest to keep Maasai girls in school. Maasai girls outperform other students so they raise the bar of literacy thus keeping the school masters employed. Why do Maasai girls do so well? It’s simple: they all know a life of slavery awaits them if they drop out of school. Few young girls understand the physical implications of FGM. They just know that staying in school is the only way to become a self actualized and powerful woman.

Measurement data: we will create a tracking system for each Maasai school in the program with monthly checks. A Global Roots surveillance team (led by GR Kenyan officers in conjunction with provincial police will investigate the disappearance of any girl. All parents who violate the agreement will be arrested and jailed. FGM is illegal in Kenya and it is considered a human rights crime by the UN. Our program finances the muscle of enforcement that does not currently exist in Kenya.

How our program works: Maasai parents will rush to enter their daughters into our food program in order to receive a weekly supply of vegetables for the family kitchen. Our vegetables will be grown in drip-system greenhouses behind each participating school. We have already proven that our greenhouses (large white structures) keep elephants and other big game way. No elephant has ever come within 50 meters of our current vegetable gardens in southeastern Kenya. The threat of elephant attack, crop trampling and water source destruction is the main reason the Maasai people’s current diet is incomplete.

The media will be informed whenever a Maasai family breaks from the program to cut a child. The parents will go to jail and the saved girl will join the girls we are already protecting.

Part III. Oversight Report — from our transparency officer on the ground in Kenya.

“I paid the US$ 1,700 to two more schools hosting our girls. 67% of the funds went to Christ The King Academy, where most of the girls school. The priest who was previously in overall charge has been transferred to another diocese. Carole had a very good relationship him and he was flexible regarding the payment of fees. The new headmistress is far less charitable so I was relieved that the funds arrived in time!

Olo Piki Dongoe primary school is in Transmara and they got the balance of the funds. The Kenya shilling has depreciated to Kshs. 88 to the dollar, so we are managing to get the money to stretch a little more.

Needless to say Carole was greatly relieved as some of the pressure on her has reduced. Once again she asked me to pass on her most profuse thanks. Her current game plan is to appeal for funding from some of the Maasai group ranches, while also continuing to apply for bursaries from the local government.

Regards

Anthony K.

Part IV Early Warning Safety Net — AK sent the following email to the USA headquarters.

I received a call from Carole this morning. She has desperately been looking for money to pay the fees for the 7 girls joining high school this year. She says her payments from the garbage collection contract have been delayed yet again. She has only been able to raise enough for the back to school shopping, wash basins, towels, toiletries etc.

As the girls who are the only ones left at home right now are getting restless and will probably lose their places anyway in the schools they had selected, she proposed calling the headmistress at Enoosaen, to request her to accept the girls, with the promise that their fees will be forwarded in due time.

She had misplaced the headmistresses number and

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