Project Update: Creative Action Mini-Grants

Pauline, a second year mentor.

Since 2015, we have partnered with the Creative Action Institute to bring the East African Girls Leadership Summit to high potential, low-income girls in Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya. In addition to sponsoring the summit, we are proud to help support ongoing mentorship training as well as provide mini-grants to the girls and mentors who have completed the summit. We are so excited to share a story from a 2018 participating organization, Rafiki Wa Maendeleo Trust, an organization which works to empower communities to create positive change for children.

Recently, Pauline Ambrose and Peline Ogembo, two second-year mentors, used a PaperSeed-funded mini-grant to implement a one-day leadership summit in western Kenya with 31 girls from 11 schools, ages 14-20. Using creative leadership tools like Leadership Trees and the One Billion Rising dance, the 31 participating girls were able to increase their critical thinking skills and self-confidence.

Girls working together on leadership trees.

Pauline and Peline shared that this training supported girls in realizing “that they could turn the limiting beliefs to be their strengths…. This then led us to the declaration moment where the 31 girls then wrote on a piece of cloth and also recited poems declaring what they really wanted to see happen and change, which was powerful.”

These girls’ schools have established clubs that reach 570 girls. The 31 leaders will use the existing clubs as a platform for Urumuri Dada clubs (clubs that focus on girls’ rights) to incorporate what they learned, with the goal of building the network of girls who are rising together to advocate for girls’ rights. We can’t wait to see how far these girls go, now that they are armed with the skills and knowledge to lead their peers.