Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Nairobi (Fides Service) - Education for girls is a new concept among the Turkana people in north west Kenya a harsh desert land where the community struggles for survival in the face of drought, famines and cattle rustling.
In this inhospitable region for 45 years the Catholic Church has been spreading the good news of God’s love by means of food and water projects, development programmes, education and healthcare. Opened in 1991 as Turkana Homecraft Centre to offer simple training in housecraft skills to girls who could not go on to secondary school, today St Clare’s Homecraft Centre taken over by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary FMM in 2001 provides skills, employment and income generating activities. It offers trainees basic knowledge in dressmaking, cookery, housekeeping and laundry, childcare and religious and social studies. The two year course aims to form committed and trained young women with solid human and Christian values who can make a different in their families and in the local Turkana community.
Between 2002 and 2005 76 students graduated and this year previous students were invited to take a follow-up programme in micro-finance in view of becoming self-reliant. Thirty three participants attended two and a half day workshop on principles of marketing, book-keeping, simple accounting and basic principles of savings and credit. Of the former students thirteen are now employed in organisations and parishes, ten are self employed, two have gone back to school for further education and eight are waiting for the results of their job interviews.
The conditions of women in this region are harsh: heavy labour, early pregnancies, scarcity of food and water, to share among growing population. Despite these conditions the Turkana community of 70,000 in the 1960s has grown to 500,000 while the animals are continually decimated by drought. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 21/3/2007 righe 28 parole 341)
