Thanks to all our new followers! We’re relatively new to tumblr so we appreciate your support. In other news, our first newsletter just went out today! To sign up for our mailing list, just click here.
Our girls are studying for finals this month! Keep them in your thoughts and prayers as we they gear up for the next term. We need your help to ensure that they will be returning to school in January.
We are also receiving dozens of new applications from girls who are aspiring doctors, lawyers, accountants, and social activists. Become their sponsor today!
(Source: freelyinhope.org)
Kibera is the largest slum in Kenya with over 1 million residents. Over one third of Nairobi’s population live in this slum without access to food, clean water, health, and education. Poverty, HIV/AIDS, crime and rape are rampant. Women often suffer the most as the sole provider of their families. In Kenya, 33% of women trade sex to survive by 16; in Kibera, 66% of girls trade sex for food as early as 6. Women in Kibera contract HIV at a rate 5 times their male counterparts: Kibera has one of the world’s highest HIV rates. Only 8% of women ever attend school. 1 of 5 children do not live to see a 5th birthday. 7 of 10 women will experience violence.
Breaking out of the cycle of poverty is possible through economic empowerment. Freely in Hope andEmpowering Lives International are partnering to provide opportunities for women in the Kibera Slum through micro-business training. Through ELI’s Dynamic Business Start-Up Project, widows, single mothers, and young women will be equipped for long-term success.
Empowering women through micro-business will keep children in school, relieve poverty, liberate women from prostitution, end homelessness, and sustain entire families.
Give the gift of micro-business training to a woman in Kibera.
(Specify “Kibera” in the comments section.)
(Source: freelyinhope.org)
Grace Wangosi’s story is featured on Relevant Magazine’s and Reject Apathy’s video page! This short film also won the Jury Award for the Film Your Issue competition from the What’s Your Issue Foundation.
To learn more about Grace’s story, purchase the full film online. Proceeds will go toward building an orphanage for Grace and her 15 orphans.
(Source: freelyinhope.org)
Freely in Hope focuses on Millennium Development Goal #3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women. Our target is to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education no later than 2015.
- For girls in some regions, education remains elusive
- Poverty is a major barrier to education, especially among older girls
- In every developing region except the CIS, men outnumber women in paid employment
- Women are largely relegated to more vulnerable forms of employment
- Women are over-represented in informal employment, with its lack of benefits and securityTop-level jobs still go to men — to an overwhelming degree
- Women are slowly rising to political power, but mainly when boosted by quotas and other special measures
(Source: freelyinhope.org)
