The Ewuaso Najile School for Girls is a secondary boarding school, located approximately 70 kilometers from Nairobi. The school, now a landmark in the expansive Najile savanna, houses 267 girls. Twenty-one of these girls are sponsored through our ministry.
The challenges facing girls in this Maasai community necessitated their empowerment through education — mainly because the priority to go to school is given to boys.
With an education, these girls are now free to dream, compete with their male counterparts, and decide their own future. This feat was unheard of in years past.
Pauline is one such Maasai girl who aims at reaching great heights:
“I want to shape my future so that I can be of help to myself and others. I want to be a doctor.
Other girls (not in school) look much older than me. They are married and have children at a young age, and they face many hardships at home.”
Pauline’s friend Mary is not enrolled in our program or from the Maasai community, but the school has made a great impact in her life.
“I have come to learn more about the Maasai people and their way of life. I even speak some Maasai.
I hope to one day become an electrical engineer.”
Teachers at the Najile Girls’ School understand the value of education.
Isaac, a history teacher, sees the school as a launching pad for a new generation of Maasai girls.
“Illiteracy and lack of exposure has dragged us behind. We have many bright girls who can compete with anyone.
“This opportunity to be in school offers them that chance.”
This new generation of Maasai girls have a new outlook on life and they hope to make a difference in their respective communities.
Joyce is an older sponsored child who has been lending a helping hand at the girls’ school for the last three months.
She believes that an educated woman is more endowed with the confidence to be independent.
“I want to have fewer children so that I can educate all of them with ease. My mother sold the last of her cows to educate me.”
With time, Maasai girls from Ewuaso Najile will not be married off in their teen years to older men, bear an unmanageable number of children, or trek for long distances in search of water and social amenities such as hospitals.
These girls will one day offer solutions to the perennial droughts, and stop retrogressive cultural practices such as early marriages and female genital mutilation. They will help improve the main economic activity and the pride of the Maasai people, livestock keeping.
