What better way to invest in adolescent girls and young women to grow and effectively participate in their society than by giving them a voice?

This is what the Imarisha Msichana program, a partnership of the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) and the Mastercard Foundation, is doing through Tuseme Clubs.

The Tuseme Clubs are formed in schools to empower girls to speak out. They provide a safe space for young girls to learn and express their views about the gender-based challenges that they face, which can be a major barrier to their participation and excelling in their education. The main participants of the Tuseme clubs are diverse groups of girls, including teen mothers aged between 9 to 18 years and young women aged 19 to 25 years who benefit from knowledge and skills that would enable them to fully transition to adulthood. The school-based clubs are run by club patrons who are assigned teachers from the schools, and the students form the membership.

Since the inception of Tuseme Clubs in 2022, the program has established 160 clubs in selected schools across 20 counties. The girls are also introduced to FAWE’s Tuseme Youth Empowerment Program, which brings in girls and boys and provides a platform to create gender awareness on several topics, thus enhancing self-esteem, leadership, and social and life skills while promoting a positive attitude amongst boys towards girls’ education.

The program has designed an age-appropriate and context-relevant Tuseme Manual that provides guidance on establishing and running Tuseme Clubs in participating schools.

DETAILS

Imarisha Msichana Program

The Imarisha Msichana program is a partnership between FAWE Africa and Mastercard Foundation aimed at significantly reducing the incidences of teenage pregnancy in Kenya as a major barrier to adolescent girls and young women’s participation in quality education. The program is implemented in 20 counties in Kenya, by three implementation partners – FAWE Kenya, CREAW and Kenya Red Cross.

The project interventions include collaboration with key stakeholders in the generation of credible and acceptable data on teenage pregnancies in Kenya that advises on girl-centered and gender transformative solutions, championing and supporting re-entry of teen mums back to school, providing comprehensive sexuality education, sensitization forums for different stakeholders in the community including -girls, young women, boys, young men, parents, community leaders Sexual reproductive health rights, shifting social and cultural norms that perpetuate gender inequality, on and media advocacy and sensitization programmes

The Tuseme Clubs Model

The Tuseme Clubs are formed in schools to empower girls to speak out and provide a safe space for young girls to learn and express their views about the gender-based challenges that they face that can be a major barrier to their participation and excelling in their education. The main participants of the Tuseme clubs are diverse groups of girls, including teen mothers aged between 9 to 18 years and young women aged 19 to 25 years who benefit from knowledge and skills that would enable them to fully transition to adulthood.

The model entails investing in adolescent girls and young women in select counties to grow and effectively participate in their society. This selection also includes specific targeting of adolescent girls with disabilities and displaced/refugee girls. These girls are consulted on the proposed solutions and, where applicable, participate in the implementation of the project.

The girls are then introduced to FAWE’s Tuseme Youth Empowerment Program, which brings in girls and boys and provides a platform to create gender awareness on several topics, thus enhancing self-esteem, leadership, and social and life skills while promoting a positive attitude amongst boys towards girls’ education.

The program has designed an age-appropriate and context-relevant Tuseme Manual that provides guidance on establishing and running Tuseme Clubs in participating schools.

Impact so far

Since the inception of Tuseme Clubs in 2022, the program has established 160 clubs in selected schools across 20 counties. The school-based clubs are run by club patrons who are assigned teachers from the schools and the students form the members. During monitoring visits, FAWE has noted an improved understanding of the Tuseme club’s roles and objectives by the patrons and club members, this will promote sustainability.

All the Tuseme clubs have institutionalized Tuseme model by setting up a day in a week for meetups that provides a platform for the members to participate in the club activities. They have also developed a constitution to help govern the clubs. The clubs are currently doing a lot of activities in line with their formulated action plan aimed at advocating against teenage pregnancies, child marriage and all other retrogressive cultural practices that happen within the community setups that disproportionately affect the young girls in school.

teachers from the different participating schools, especially those involved as Tuseme club patrons, are reporting an improvement on students' participation in all facets of their lives. They reported experiencing over 72% of the school population who are now able to speak out and express themselves, especially whenever they face any academic and social challenge that requires teacher or peer attention. Peer-to-peer learning has also improved since the students are able to speak and communicate effectively without fear or low esteem.

Most patrons have also been using the Tuseme club platforms to take the students through some key life skills sessions on communication, self-esteem, self-efficacy and sexual reproductive health and rights. This has greatly improved students' social skills beyond the class and gives the girls and boys the confidence required to prevent and stop teenage pregnancy, child marriage and all other retrogressive cultural practices affecting their education.

64% of schools under the Imarisha Msichana program, are using other interactive strategies, such as theatre, poems etc. to deliver awareness messages in a more exciting way. The mentioned strategies have been used during parents' meeting platforms to sensitize the parents/guardians and students on challenges affecting girls in accessing, remaining in school and transitioning to other higher levels of education and actions needed by all the relevant stakeholders to support the girls.

As a result of the above efforts done by the Tuseme clubs in the schools, the schools are experiencing the following progressive changes among the students:

• The students/pupils can now express themselves without fear.
• The students/pupils are proactively reporting issues like threats/risks that would affect their education.
• The students/pupils are now free with their teachers and can comfortably interact and express themselves which, initially before the introduction of the clubs, was rare and difficult.