HISTORY

Karen Austrian and Emily Verellen met while students in the School for International Training's Kenya Program in the spring of 2001. While in Kenya, Emily worked with Nairobi street children and Karen worked with a reproductive health clinic doing community outreach. While both enjoyed their experiences, Emily and Karen each saw a need for programs focused on girls and young women.

Emily realized that while there was an abundance of youth programs, there was a lack of programming specifically for girls. The youth programs that did exist tended to attract boys because of their reliance on sports programming, overwhelmingly male leadership, and a lack of sensitivity to the domestic responsibilities of young women in Kenya. From her time in the clinic, Karen saw that, while expanding, reproductive health education and outreach largely targeted married women and missed the unique set of needs that young women have. After returning to the States, the powerful experiences that both Karen and Emily had while in Kenya left them with a desire to return and use their combined skills and experience to implement an innovative program specifically targeting young women.

After receiving a small grant from Columbia University, Karen and Emily contacted Carolina for Kibera. Upon arriving in Kenya, Karen and Emily worked with CFK to recruit 12 young women between the ages of 13-18 to form the first group, named Binti Pamoja ("Daughters United" in Swahili) by the members. The group met three to five times a week in a donated classroom at Kibera Primary School. These meetings became Phase One of the Binti Pamoja Center.

The Binti Pamoja curriculum was not pre-set, but determined by the questions, concerns, and critical issues raised by the young women in the group. The first issue the group raised was violence against women, and discussion topics that followed included sex, contraception, STDs, and ethnic conflict. To address some of these core issues, the group took a field trip to the Coalition on Violence Against Women, a local NGO that provides counseling and advocacy on domestic violence. In addition, a reproductive health nurse from the Family Planning Association of Kenya came to a group meeting to speak about contraception and STDs.
 
Complementing group discussions, members were given disposable cameras and assignments that paralleled discussion topics. The first assignment was "A Day in the Life of a Young Woman in Kibera" and the second was "Reproductive Health Issues." Once the photos were developed, the group used them as a tool, together with role-playing and drama, to discuss sensitive issues such as rape, prostitution, and HIV/AIDS. The level of detachment that the photography provided when the girls were asked questions such as, "What would you do if you were the girl in the picture?" allowed them to explore alternatives and potential solutions to problems that they were likely facing themselves.

Phase One culminated with a photo exhibition in Nairobi that drew over three hundred people, ranging from the girls' friends and family to members of the CFK Board of Trustees and representatives from local women's rights NGOs. Each girl chose four photos to be enlarged and displayed and wrote an essay to accompany each photo. Two members also spoke at the reception and each girl participated in one of three short skits reflecting the issues discussed throughout the program.

As a result of the girls' phenomenal and powerful work, Reuters' Africa Journal aired a documentary segment about Binti Pamoja and various organizations expressed interest in funding a book developed from the girls' photos and essays. However, even more important from the program's standpoint was the incredible pride and self-confidence that these girls exhibited on the day of the exhibition and the powerful cross-ethnic friendships that were evident in the group's unity.

Early on in the project, it became clear that Binti Pamoja should be expanded from the two-month project, and that both the interest and need were present for a long-term, sustainable program as part of the larger CFK organization. In an effort to make this possible, from August 2002 to August 2003, the Binti Pamoja Center entered Phase Two, a scaled back version of Phase One, in which the Kenyan members met twice a week for group discussions and occasional educational speakers and field trips.

During Phase Two, Karen and Emily lived in New York City and worked to fundraise for Phase Three of the Binti Pamoja Center. The Center received grants from the American Jewish World Service and the RAINBO Small Grants Program, in addition to travel funds from the Ford Foundation and a significant number of private donations.

Part of their efforts to raise awareness and funds for the Center was hosting a series of photo exhibitions. These exhibitions were held in Providence, RI; at UNC in Chapel Hill, NC; at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.; and Columbia University in New York City. The exhibitions consisted of over 70 photos taken by the Binti Pamoja members and their accompanying essays. One of the highlights was the opening reception of the New York City exhibition was Mrs. Nane Annan-- lawyer, artist, and wife of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan-- who, as the guest speaker, spoke to a crowd of over four hundred.

Throughout 2003, Binti Pamoja was featured in various media outlets, including CNN.com, NPR - Boston, Reuters, and YM Magazine among others. In September 2003, Emily and Karen returned to Nairobi to implement Phase Three of the Binti Pamoja Center and remained through August 2004. The year saw a significant expansion in both membership and programming.  Significantly, the Center hired Caroilne Sakwa who started as a program assistant and then transitioned to become the program coordinator and take over the leadership of the Center.