Leadership training- Kenya

Train the Trainers - Londiani, Kenya

Girl Guide and Girl Scout leaders from around the world are joining together with the Friends of Londiani, Kenya, from 21 to 27 February to support the local community in an initiative to help 4500 local girls and young women.

In 2009, WAGGGS held the Juliette Low Seminar in Kenya -an international training seminar as part of the WAGGGS Leadership Development Program (WLDP) – – for 70 young women from 70 countries. Approximately 17 of these participants spent a week with a partner organisation, Friends of Londiani (FOL), in the district of Kipkelion in Northern Kenya.  This significant event was the start of a partnership.

At the WLDP training in May 2010, one of the young women who was a host for the event in Londiani and attended the JLS - local Guide leader and teacher, Evaline Martim spoke to the trainers about the community based work of Guides in Londiani, and expressed the need for young women to have access to sanitary products. Since then work has focused on researching existing affordable sanitary products available, and looking at other similar models of work in Kenya and elsewhere.  Contacts have been made with other NGOs working in this area, in order to develop an approach that meets the needs of girls and women in Londiani and fits with the community development and leadership approaches of WAGGGS.

At this  ‘train the trainers’ a ‘sanitary’ education and awareness programme will be developed and delivered to the first intake of trainers, who will then be responsible for the delivery of the training to girls across the district – ahead of receiving the sanitary products. It will also provide an opportunity for the local public health team who do the Healthy Schools training to train the WAGGGS trainers in this material, so they in turn can share it in their own countries.