Woman empowers widows, teenage mothers in Meru

 

Meru Nominated MCA Gacheri Muthuri. She has dedicated her life to serve vulnerable groups including widows and teenage mothers. [Phares Mutembei, Standard]

Gacheri Muthuri has dedicated her life to empowering teenage mothers and widows in Meru county.

Muthuri who is the patron of the 5,000-member South Imenti Widows Community-based Organisation lobbies for opportunities for vulnerable women.

She said she decided to help the women after realising that many were disinherited by their families and left with no money to file petitions or meet their basic needs.

Muthuri uses donations from friends and well-wishers to assist the women and ensure teenage mothers return to school.

"We have an empowerment programme for them where we buy household items from the wholesale and they sell at retail price and earn profits. The seed capital is left to the organisation," she said, adding that she facilitated the women to be trained as dispute resolution mediators.

"At least 15 have been trained as mediators and can now handle cases at the grassroots for other widows who do not require legal litigation, which is also expensive," she said.

Besides helping the widows to fight for inheritance through courts and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, Muthuri has also helped them to start table banking.

As a result, she has been rewarded through nomination to the Meru county assembly by PNU in 2017 and Jubilee in 2022.

Advocacy for women’s rights has remained her priority even in the assembly.

Muthuri’s Mount Kenya East Institute of Agriculture and Development Studies in South Imenti sub county hosts teenage mothers who study while taking care of their children.

The teenage mothers, majority in their early 20s, are in class with other students, and take breaks to breastfeed, cuddle, and lull their babies to sleep.

At 10 am, the mothers take a break to breastfeed and spend time with their babies before resuming lessons until 1 pm, when they break for lunch.

The return to class at 2pm until 4 pm when they take the babies to their cubicles for the night.

The young women have a chance to fulfill their socio-economic aspirations at the institute, where they do various courses, including Hairdressing and Beauty Therapy, Food and Beverage, Financial and Business Literacy, and Agripreneurship.

Muthuri, a director at the institute, said effects of Covid-19 like restricted movement and closure of schools led to a spike in teenage pregnancies and school drop-out.

Most girls have since graduated from the institute and got assistance to set up businesses.

Muthuri said they could not watch as  teenage mothers wallowed in despair.

“There are many who dropped out. We have not been able as a country to establish the whereabouts of these girls. Some went back to school but because of many challenges, including poverty, did not perform very well in either primary or secondary examinations,” she said.

“We are more of a rescue centre for the young mothers, but we integrate them with other students to avoid stigma. They study together with the rest. There is a lot of good transformation compared to when they came in,” she added.

“The society assumes a young girl automatically becomes an adult after giving birth, which is not true. She is still a child based on her age and should be given special treatment.”

Muthuri said: “This is an unfortunate state in Meru, where we have teenage pregnancies and school dropouts affecting both primary and secondary school girls. Some girls get early sexual exposure because they lack basic needs like sanitary pads, so they get exposed to get favours of money to cater for such needs.”

Together with other women, they have been providing sanitary pads to girls in the community but she says this is too little to each all the people in need..

“It’s like a drop in the ocean, but plans are underway to revive the “Tunaweza chill” clubs in schools. This is a preventive strategy, but we realise that this data has been published. Already, we have girls who have given birth or who will give birth. We encourage parents and teachers to support them. The parents can take care of the kids and have the girls go back to school,” she said.

At the institute, she offers the teenage mothers a child care centre so that they can concentrate on their studies.

“We encourage the young mothers to come with their babies, and we take care of them in a child care centre as the mother gets skills that can empower them to be self-employed. The challenge is some needy young mothers still cannot afford to be in college. I call upon well-wishers and cooperate to sponsor at least these young mothers to be in college,” she said.