My name is Peninah Esianoi Pashile. I was a sponsored child at Imaroro Child Develoment Center in Kenya. I would like to share my story with you and hope that it will be an inspiration and encouragement to all who are dedicating their time and resources to releasing children from poverty in Jesus’ name.
Your work is not in vain; your acts of compassion are changing the world day by day.
I was born in 1982, the fifth of seven children in the household. I was born and brought up in a remote village of Empuyiankat in Kajiado district, Rift Valley province in Kenya.
My father is a polygamist, married to three wives with 24 children. My father and his wives have no formal education.
As a girl in the highly patriarchal Maasai community, my chances of attaining an education were dim. Girls in my community are raised to be submissive and dependent upon men all their lives.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriages of 13-year-old girls to men decades older than them characterize the lives of 99 percent of Maasai girls. A gender-oppressive culture, few and understaffed education facilities, and long treks from home to school and back across the vast savanna plains full of wild animals are some of the challenges girls in my community endure to access education.
I started school at the age of 6 at Imaroro Primary School. My enrollment to school and the Compassion program was the defining event of my life. (more…)
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