Lilian is a bright, energetic 16 year old girl. She is serious about her studies, always on-time and prepared. She barely speaks above a whisper, but she is quick with a smile or a hug or a dance. Like many second-born children, she watched her older sister and learned. She told me her story on the steps of the Women’s Institute for Secondary Education and Research (WISER), a full scholarship, secondary school for needy girls in Muhuru Bay, Kenya overlooking beautiful Lake Victoria. This is my third trip to WISER with a group of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) employees. Many of the original donations that helped found the school and fund scholarships over the years to support HIV orphans came from J&J.
She told me that her older sister was married in the 7th grade. Her parents could not afford school fees for her education and needed her to bring in a dowry. When asked, the girls explain very matter-of-factly the traditional dowry in this area consists of two cows, and sometimes they throw in a goat. Lilian determined that the only way to escape her sister’s fate was to get an education. So as a very young girl, she got focused like a laser on her goal.
Being a girl and getting an education is no easy task when you are from Muhuru Bay, a poor rural community with a 38 percent HIV positive rate. Before WISER, only one girl in the area was known to have finished secondary school and passed the KCSE (high school exit exam). Only 5 percent of girls even started secondary school before dropping out. Because when parents have to make an investment, they invest in the boys. Girls had no hope; until hope rolled in one day in the form of Duke University professor Sherryl Broverman, PhD.
“A well-known World Bank study shows that if you want to end poverty, hunger, disease, infant mortality, you educate the girls,” said Dr. Broverman. “We started WISER in 2010, have graduated four classes of girls who have gone on to qualify for university-level education and more than half with full scholarships – the experiment works.”
WISER began with 30 girls, then 60, then 90. Currently, WISER is interviewing girls for a new class of 60 taking the total enrollment to 150 young women. With grant money, the plan is to increase enrollment to 240. And the girls can show up to WISER with nothing. They get clothes, school fees, books, room/board, safety and security. Sometimes this is their first bed and the first time they’ve had three meals a day consistently. In many ways, WISER girls aren’t like American teenagers. They long for the safety and promise of school. This education is their ticket to a better life, a future of their own design, a road to their dreams.
I have a daughter who is a typical 7th grader. She is a three-season athlete, a straight A student and very social. She takes for granted a life WISER girls could only dream of. But she is well-educated on the plight of the WISER girls and, as a result, for her Bat Mitzvah this October, she and her friends held a car wash to raise money for the school. In her Bat Mitzvah speech about the project she said, “The money we raised will buy books for the WISER girls; books lead to knowledge, knowledge is power and power is what will bring about change; it will give these girls a chance; at the very least, it could save a girl my age from being married in exchange for two cows. This prayer goes out from the 13-year-old girls in Yardley, Pa the 13-year-old girls in Muhuru Bay: keep fighting and we will keep fighting for you.”
The fight is just beginning. Many of the WISER girls are orphans and intend to get an education and come back to provide for their families. WISER is more than a school; it is a community works program. Short term, the school grows its own food and sells clean water back to the community at cost. Long term, the school expects the girls will come back and improve the community. Lilian will be the first person in her family to get an education and set a different type of example for her five younger siblings. When I asked Lilian how WISER would change Muhuru Bay she said, “Because of WISER, girls in Muhuru Bay have gone from getting married in 6th or 7th grade to girls getting an education and continuing on to university; I thank G-d every day for the opportunity. I am one of the lucky ones, because 13 is too young to be married.”
- Melissa Katz is a Healthcare PR Consultant and has been volunteering for WISER since 2012. She has blogged about her three visits to WISER in Muhuru Bay, Kenya at www.educateagirl.blogspot.com. To get involved and donate to WISER visit www.wisergirls.org
Lilian, WISER Form 4