DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT DESTRUCTION, EMPOWERMENT FOR ENABLING CHOICES

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Gender Equity and Rights
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EQUITY FOR WOMEN AND MARGINALISED GROUPS

Women and girls in Turkana and Samburu counties, northern Kenya, face huge and complex disadvantages in their day-to-day lives. Communities in these arid, remote places are affected by high levels of poverty, hunger, and disease, and extremely limited access to basic welfare or education services. Communications and transportation infrastructure are similarly inadequate, and there is little evidence for effective local governance. Women and girls are disproportionately affected by all these issues, partly as the result of highly patriarchal values (particularly in traditional rural communities).

Pragya sims to with women, girls and local health workers to enhance capacity for providing appropriate, peer-led maternal and reproductive health support, advice, surveillance and referral services for ending violence against women. It seeks to engage with women, girls, men and boys living in rural communities to enhance knowledge of maternal and reproductive health risk, causes and nature of gender based violence and discrimination and build increased levels of sensitivity and constuctive dialogue around gender equity issues.

Success story

Improving maternal and child health in Kenya

The Laikipia, Samburu and Turkana counties are underdeveloped semi-arid and arid lands in Northern Kenya. The frequent...

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EQUITY FOR WOMEN AND MARGINALISED GROUPS

GENDER EQUITY

Women and girls in Kenya and particularly among the remote and chronically poor communities that Pragya works with, experience multiple disadvantages. They are disproportionately affected by poverty, suffer deeper levels of hunger and malnutrition, along with lower access to healthcare (even sexual and reproductive care) and education, and frequent gender-based violence and discrimination as a result of the prevalent patriarchal societies and practices. Culturally sanctioned violence persists in families, even including female genital mutilation, while atrocities on women and girls in the public sphere are also common. Although women carry significant part of the family’s livelihood related workload as well as the burden of household chores, they have little control on the family’s assets or finances.

EQUITY FOR WOMEN AND MARGINALISED GROUPS

GENDER EQUITY

Gender sensitivity is entrenched across the spectrum of Pragya’s work. We work to help promote a more equitable society for women and girls, though a combination of measures encompassing women’s economic independence, promotion of girls’ educational participation, community sensitivity training on gender issues, awareness raising on human rights and the law. Some of the ways gender equality is woven into our projects include:

·    Our work cultivating medicinal plants in Kakamega county is aimed predominantly at women’s economic empowerment, with between 75-100% of beneficiaries being women. The cultivation of medicinal plants requires significantly less land than other cash or traditional food crops grown in the region, and otherwise unusable plots of land can be used for the purpose, and so the project is well suited to women who typically have less access to land than men.

·    We run gender-sensitivity training in schools, and through our Education Resource Centres we deliver gender-sensitive educational material addressing subjects such as healthcare for adolescent girls and human rights and legal issues pertinent to women and girls.

·    Our water projects are designed with women’s empowerment and equality in mind. Women in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL) of central and northern Kenya are traditionally responsible for household water collection and management. With climate change bringing ever greater levels of water stress to the region, the burden and drudgery for women correspondingly increases as they are forced to cover greater distances to collect water, exposing them to risks associated with longer journeys. Additionally, water stress drives inter-community conflict, which disproportionately impacts women and children. 

·    Following extensive field research and analysis, we designed an innovative model of maternal and reproductive healthcare for neglected last mile populations, anchored around a network of women’s peer support groups. The project is designed to reduce the high maternal mortality rates in the ASALs, providing as support network for pregnant women and new mothers, raising awareness on critical needs surrounding maternal and reproductive health, and addressing social norms that negatively impact women’s health.

Taken together, these projects are challenging the multiple disadvantages and abuses suffered by women and girls in Kenya’s remote rural communities.

 

EQUITY FOR WOMEN AND MARGINALISED GROUPS

GENDER EQUITY

GEOGRAPHY / LOCATION

Pragya’s intervention/s towards Empowering Women has been/ is being carried out in all areas of Pragya’s operation, including the counties of Kakamega, Laikipia, Samburu and Turkana.

 

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