🔶Kenya Field Report🔶 - Jael: Learning to Make Choices That Are True to Herself and Paving Her Own Future

PLAS is conducting an SRHR project in Homa Bay County, Kenya, to prevent unwanted pregnancies among children.

In this project, we are training 20 children as peer educators to teach children and adults in the community about accurate sexual knowledge and self-determination, with the goal of reducing pregnancies among those under 18.

In March, a school session was held to discuss the risks of gender-based violence and the use of contraceptives with children, and more than 20 children participated.

Some of the children who attended the school session came to ask if they could join the peer educator training, which shows that the peer educators are acting as role models and that the SRHR project is being accepted in the community.

Jael, who is working enthusiastically as a peer educator

Jael, who is active as a peer educator, joined the project to fulfill her goal of becoming a leader who can help others.

Jael is a 17-year-old girl and the second of six children. She lost her father when she was five, and since then, her mother has raised Jael and her siblings on her own.

The struggles of a single-parent household

During the training, Jael shared the struggles she has actually faced as part of a single-parent household.

Please see here for the training session.

Many of her friends used expensive items like school supplies and clothes. However, because she comes from a single-mother household, her family could not afford to buy expensive clothes.

Seeing this, her classmates advised her that she should just have a boyfriend buy her nice clothes.

Jael has been working hard to resist the peer pressure from those around her, even though she has felt close to giving in.

She says she is grateful for the knowledge and skills she gained through this project to overcome such peer pressure.

She believes that what she has learned will be very useful not only for focusing on her dreams for a better future but also for building better relationships with her classmates.

Including Jael, the peer educators will act as little teachers, passing on what they have learned through training to other children in their community.

We will continue to provide support so that the entire community can appropriately address peer pressure, enabling everyone to make choices true to themselves and pursue their own dreams.

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