YSW’s Connect A Girl project is making waves in Kwale County! We’ve been pushing for the Kwale County Gender and Social Inclusion Policy, a game-changer for women and girls. This policy is all about equal representation, empowerment, and breaking down barriers in leadership, access to resources, and decision-making spaces.

It tackles real issues head-on harmful cultural practices like FGM, child marriage, teenage pregnancies, and wife inheritance, while ensuring gender-responsive policies in health, employment, infrastructure, water, justice, and the environment.

This document is under validation process by other gender experts to ensure it meets both the legal and gender threshold as a policy to adequately address the issues therein. The revised policy will be presented to the cabinet committee and then to the County Assembly for approval before the Kwale County Gender and Social Inclusion Policy revised draft is finally adopted.

This is more than a policy; it’s a bold step toward an inclusive, just, and equal future for every girl and woman in Kwale!

 “Iweyowa nang’o” – “How are you leaving us, now that you are going?”

“Iweyowa nang’o”, loosely translating to “How are you leaving us, now that you are going?”) is a Luo phrase a woman uses to ask her husband when he leaves home for his daily hustles.

It is also a round-about way for a wife to ask their husbands for cash to cater for the day’s provisions or needs, especially food – an indication of her dependency on him.

However, for Awino (Not her real name), an adolescent mother of two, who has been empowered under the RTLG project, this phrase is conspicuously absent in her household. Since joining the programme, she has established her own business, a kitchen garden, and poultry farming.

Following a series of trainings by YSW Kenya and EACR, Awino was able to save up part of the facilitation fee and start a Mandazi (donuts) business that has since transitioned into a samosa (stuffed pastry) business. To make the samosas, she began cooking with one kilogram of flour and a quarter kilogram of green grams. Gradually, demand increased, and now she cooks with two kilograms of flour and three-quarters of green grams, which she sells every day. The profits she makes from her business leaves her with enough money for her savings, for contribution to the village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) with other young mothers, clothes for her children, and food for her household.

“Even he (her husband) knows. I do not ask him for money, since I joined the DSW programme. He gives me when he has, but I don’t need to ask him for money. I am good, and I am comfortable.”

– Awino, a Young mother in Migori