A safe space for girls to learn and grow.

 

The Daughters United (Swahili: Binti Pamoja) Center is a reproductive health and womens’ rights center for 11 to 18 year-old girls in Kibera. The Center gives the young women of Kibera a place to express themselves through dance, drama, writing, group discussions and photography.

 

The Daughters United Center creates and provides a safe space for adolescent girls in Kibera, an otherwise hostile environment to this group.  The Center has helped girls explore the issues that are prevalent in their daily lives; violence against women, rape, prostitution, HIV/AIDS, female genital mutilation, poverty, sexual abuse, unequal access to education, lack of reproductive health care and information, and demanding domestic responsibilities.  The Center uses photography, drama, writing, and group discussion to investigate such issues in depth, allowing the girls to confront these issues and learn technical information about reproductive health and financial literacy.  Furthermore, the Center hosts monthly speakers and field trips, community service projects, family events, and peer education programs designed to further empower the girls and provide an outlet for them to educate their communities through drama, a newsletter, and youth forums.  A new group of girls is recruited into the Center each year, and after two years they graduate into the alumni group where they take on leadership roles in the Center and start new girls groups in the community. Sixty Alumni Leaders currently serve as leaders for the Center. The program currently has twenty-seven active Safe Spaces groups- at least one in every village in Kibera- lead by alumni. Safe Spaces group provide a safe, nurturing, and educational environment for girls to explore the issues that affect them most and develop leadership and financial literacy skills that help secure a better future for adolescent girls in Kibera.

 

Safe spaces and nurturing opportunities for self-discovery and self-confidence are critical for girls in Kibera. Help CFK serve more girls.

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Lightbox: Expressions of Hope From Young Women in the Kibera Slum of Nairobi

LightBox is comprised entirely of photographs taken by Daughters United members and essays they have written to accompany those photos. All of the pictures were taken with disposable or simple point-and-shoot cameras during the period of 2002-2004. Most of the photographers had never before held a camera, and were provided less than two hours of basic training. Their expressions offer a candid look at the lives of young women in poverty. LightBox demonstrates the value of empowering a young woman and is a celebration of the victories these young women achieve every day. Their photography and essays display a powerful message – one of struggle, perseverance and hope.

100% of proceeds from LightBox support The Binti Pamoja Center Scholarship Fund, which helps the members attend high school.

Buy the book here.