Pads mentoring, mothering and support help girls say no to sex for favours

When she started a WhatsApp group to lobby for donated sanitary towels in 2018, Jackline Saleiyan had only one goal: to stop sex for favours. 

Her job, she thought, was clear: find pads, give them to girls, ask for more the next month to ensure girls stay in school. They won’t have to stay home during their periods

That way, she thought, girls won’t be lured to have sex by men who will pay for the pads.

She started A Pack a Month in Ngong’, Rongai, Matasia and Matare areas in Kajiao and Nairobi counties.

A few months later, 29-year-old Saleiyan found it was far from simple.

She was dealing with a case of sisters defiled and made pregnant by their stepfather.

The mother was also pregnant and since her husband was the sole breadwinner, they kept the problem under wraps.

“A health officer brought the issue to our attention. The father was arrested and the girls rescued,” Saleiyan said.

It was after the first donation that Saleiyan found that the problem of pregnancy was linked with other issues and deeply rooted in her community in Ngong’.

“There was no way I was going to give sanitary towels to a young girl and look away from information that she is sexually abused at home,” she explained.

“If they are hungry, they’ll still have sex for food and if they do not understand their own value, they will be taken advantage of,” she added.

Saleiyan had been motivated by many stories of girls taking their exams from maternity wards, or taking them while pregnant.

To understand the trend, the mother of two spoke to a teacher who said high poverty levels and lack of basic needs push girls into having transactional sex.

“The teacher painted a grim picture of the mockery the girls undergo when menstrual blood leaks, lowering their self-esteem and school performance”.

Some girls attend schools more than six kilometres from home and travel through rough territory, forests and quarries. Wildlife lurks along the way.

“Quarry workers often give the girls rides in return they ask for sex. Due to wildlife threat and the long-distance, they give in,” Saleiyan said.

She realised that for lack of pads, some girls drop out of school and some are driven into early marriage.

Determined to make a difference, Saleiyan started a WhatsApp group where she added her associates to donate pads to schoolgirls.

After the first donation, 150 packs of pads, a pupil secretly gave her a note, asking if they could talk.

“I was eight months’ expectant and very tired, but when I spoke to her, my strength was renewed. I knew then the problem was psychological and I had to appeal to their minds to make any difference,” she explained.

Saleiyan said she immediately set up a mentorship and training programme to help change their deeply rooted negative perceptions about women’s worth and role in society.

Through a friend who runs The Priceless project, a similar programme in the United States, she got a curriculum and went school to school, training girls.

“The training has three pillars; self-worth,  self-esteem, and, self-respect. We also incorporate topics-based needs,” she said.

She arranged for experts to discuss stress management, goal setting, mentorship, STIs and cancer. She complemented the training with activities such as football matches and dances.

Just as she was beginning to grasp girls needs and how to tackle challenges, Covid-19 hit, causing a setback.

Of 400 girls in her project, 20 got pregnant during the nine months that schools closed in the pandemic.

“We were pushed many strides back. Violence went up as some men refused to pay for sex and got violent when girls wanted their money,” she said.

It was a big blow. A nine-year-old got pregnant and gave birth to twins. She was defiled by a relative but wouldn’t say who, Saleiyan said.

“Her family refused to press charges and threatened to relocate her if we pushed further. Since she is back in school, we didn’t want to risk her leaving,” she said in frustration.

Saleiyan said some girls asked for help getting the morning-after pill. Others went back to using drugs to help them get over the experience.

“They refer to sex where clients fail to pay as job ya karai. Due to the shame, most didn’t talk about it, even when they were physically abused.”

Drug abuse went up and she had to find a health officer to give the girls post-exposure prophylaxis to prevent HIV.

Some girls relocated to their rural homes and tracing is impossible without contacts.

Again there was a rise in early marriages that went unreported as the families had one less mouth to feed during the pandemic.

Fewer people would attend their training as they moved from schools to community hospitals or halls as schools were closed.

“Though we restructured our programme for the availability of halls, the attendance was very low,” she said. 

Some donors and financiers quit after they lost their own jobs. Some women came to depend on the pads.

Others provided technical or professional support instead of money. Counsellor Shamita Omote offers free weekly sessions to the girls and volunteers.

Though funds declined, the girls’ needs increased and more girls showed up monthly for free pads.

“During the sessions, they would ask you what their children would eat if they stopped having transactional sex,” she said.

She said the girls still needed guidance and support. No one was dropped from the programme because she got pregnant or had a baby.

Saleiyan said to kill two birds with one stone, her team gave the girls an alternative to sex for favours.

They increased football matches, tournaments and dances to reduce girls’ free time during which they abused drugs or had sex.

“After the matches, the players would be given food items including flour, sugar, rice and other things to help them sustain themselves,” she said.

Kajiado deputy county commissioner Patrick Mwangi started a multi-sectoral approach to improve girls welfare and pregnancies have been declining.

Mwangi brought together boda boda riders, matatu operators, business community members, construction workers, the judiciary, the police, health representative and others. They worked together to help the girls.

Women in the Pack a Month project also meet DCI officer Barsheba Osiemo to discuss their problems.

“There is a notable improvement and some men have been deterred by the measures,” Saleiyan said.

Ngong’ police division boss Patrick Manyasi also ensures the gender desk at the police station is always attended by a trained officer.

National statistics indicate at least 160,000 girls got married while schools were closed during the pandemic and did not report back in January.

The girls were aged between 15 and 19, according to the Presidential Policy and Strategy Unit study titled ‘Impact of Covid-19 on Adolescents’.

It was carried out between June 2020 and February 2021.

Most girls in this age bracket are in upper primary and secondary schools.

The study also indicated another 100,000 girls became mothers during the nine months school were closed.