Faith told her dream at the campfire ….
Faith is one of the Maasai Girls who participated in the MasterPeaceWalk2018 in Kenya. During this inspiring walk with 20 participants from the western world and a large group of young Maasai Girls and Warriors, these young Maasai told us openly about the beautiful sides of their traditional culture that they would like to preserve, but also the negative sides that they would like to change. In addition, they are eager to develop themselves through study in the modern world, in order to escape from a life of poverty and oppression.
Faith is a very open-hearted and communicatively strong young lady who easily touched everyone’s heart. During the campfire she shared her dream with us:
My dream is to become the voice of the Maasai girls and my society, to fight for their rights to education, educating them the importance of education, fight against female genital mutilation, fight teenage pregnancy among the young maasai girls, fight against child marriages and making this young girls realize their dreams.
Attending university
After her emotional and highly motivated story, a number of participants of the MasterPeaceWalk decided to help Faith to realise her dream. In January 2019, she started her studies in Communication and Public Relations at St. Pauls University Kenya with great enthusiasm.
The level at which students are admitted to university depends on their final secondary school results. Faith had to start at the basic Certificate level. She worked hard and achieved good results.
By studying, Faith developed herself in an amazing way. Her results got better and better and in December 2023, she completed her Bachelor in Communications with wonderful grades.
Impact on the whole community
Faith committed her intellectual and personal development to a variety of projects for her community while she was studying. One of these projects is the Strong Maasai Ladies Association (SMALA), an organisation dedicated to improving the position of girls in the Maasai community. SMALA’s main goals are: education, information and providing sanitary pads (necessary because otherwise girls cannot attend school during their periods).
Click here to read an interview with Faith in which she tells extensively about the position of girls and young women in the Maasai community.
In December 2021, her emotional essay “DO MY LIFE WORTH A COW “ was published in The Canvas, the university journal of St Paul’s University.
In 2022, Faith met Purity, one of our other students. They joined hands, and are now working together on various projects in their villages. They have involved their fellow villagers in their projects by setting up a CBO (community-based organisation).
These initiatives by Faith and Purity have generated a lot of positive energy, ambitions, beautiful plans and hope for a better future in Tikoishi and Orpirikata.
The Friends of the Maasai Foundation is involved in the realisation of these plans.
The first projects of the CBO’s in Tikoishi and Orpirikata were mainly realised by women:
• Establishing community gardens to grow vegetables for their own consumption and for sale to others;
• Improving water supply, for own consumption, for livestock and for the vegetable gardens;
• Undertaking various training courses in Laikipia (Permaculture Farm), to set up and maintain the gardens in an ecologically responsible manner, without harming nature and its rich wildlife;
• Establishing kitchen gardens, vegetable gardens just behind the house and planting fruit/food trees and using them to grow food for their own consumption;
In the meantime, the men have also enthusiastically joined in, and the projects now are embraced by the whole community.
Thanks to this amazing collaboration between Purity and Faith, the impact of their individual development has extended to their entire community.
We are very proud of their tremendous commitment. We can only sponsor a limited number of students, but through fantastic women like Purity and Faith, we can contribute to a better future for the whole of their communities and the Maasai population in general.
