The Need

Every year young women from Safe Houses in Narok County, Kenya graduate from secondary school. The Safe Houses have been their home since they were young girls, when they had to leave everything they knew behind to escape their families’ traditions of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) and/or Early Forced Childhood Marriage, as well as their culture’s unwillingness to educate girls.

By the time she graduates high school, each student has been reconciled with her parents in a ceremony that includes villagers from miles around. She has already transformed her family and community by becoming one of the first females in her village to complete secondary school. She has become an empowered and educated young woman who has dreams of creating a better future for herself and her family.

Those dreams may very well be shattered.

Upon graduation from high school, these young women are no longer protected minors under Kenyan law, and most must leave the Safe Houses. They do not yet have the skills to make their way in the world, but if they return to their villages they face the oppressive traditions they left behind and tremendous pressure to follow in the footsteps of generations of women before them.

The S.H.E. College Fund seeks to support these young women to reach for the stars.

By providing scholarships for a post-secondary education, as well as deeply engaged mentorship and life skills training, the S.H.E. College Fund makes it possible for them to acquire the knowledge, experience, and self-confidence to go out into the world, secure a job or start a small business, and return to their families and communities as professional women, income-earners, and influential changemakers.