First Lady Margaret Kenyatta has awarded Nyeri County the National Gender Equality and Women Empowerment Award as the leading County in promoting gender equality and women empowerment in the country.
The award comes in the wake of the region being at the forefront to empower women and help victims of gender based violence.
Nyeri has been financing, training and counseling pregnant school girls and young teenage mothers from poor backgrounds in a bid to help them especially during this challenging Covid-19 period through a programme dubbed ‘A better tomorrow for teenage mothers and Sexual and Gender Based Violence(SGBV) victims’.
The programme distributed about 190,000 sanitary towels to about 4,000 girls and young women in eight sub counties during the commemoration of ’16 days of activism against gender based violence held from November 25 to December 10, 2020.
Additionally, the region has seen 27 out of the 120 girls from poor backgrounds receive Sh 20,000 as support for their school fees in a partnership with African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF).
The County Executive Committee for Gender, Youth and Social Services Esther Ndung’u said that through the programme, they have managed to train 30 Gender Based Violence (GBV) champions at community level.
The chief officer of the programme George Mwangi said that they have trained girls and young women on income generating ideas such as soap and mat making to empower themselves financially.
The craft programme has seen an increased awareness of gender based violence and many pregnant girls go back to school after delivering to complete their studies.
By Mourrine Wambugu
