Students at ICA Cristo Rey Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school in the Mission, have joined forces with the Palo Alto nonprofit One Dollar For Life (ODFL) to show how small donations can make big impacts.
So far, the partnership has helped 70 girls in Kenya stay in school through ODFL’s Girls Equality Project, which raises money to provide reusable sanitary kits to help young girls manage their menstruation so that they can continue their education.
These girls, ages 13 to 19, were at serious risk of not being able to continue their education.
Alexandria Literato, a junior at ICA Cristo Rey, spearheaded the project at her school. “When we heard the results, we all screamed,” she said. “Because we know what it means to struggle in our own country, and we wanted to help other girls be able to avoid just a little of that in theirs.”
The students from ICA Cristo Rey raised $601, which averages out to $1.60 per girl. Though a modest amount, it has enabled 70 kits to be made to help girls from the Gikumbo and Sunrise Tetu schools.
The kits included essential items that help the Kenyan girls finish their schooling: two pairs of underwear, two waterproof liners, eight brightly colored and designed washcloths to insert into the liners, a ziplock bag for transport and a bar of soap.
The students of Cristo Rey aren’t strangers to hard work. As a part of their education, the students attend class four days a week and on the fifth day, they work. Prior to their freshman year, the students are put through a work training program, which prepares them for what they will need to know to be successful in an office environment.
“I was so impressed by these girls,” said Brenda Birrell, project manager at ODFL.
In addition to Kenya, the Girls Equality Project is working to provide kits to Zambia, South Africa and Nepal.
In a related article that Birrell wrote for Medium.com on Dec. 9, 2017, titled “#MeToo is millions of times bigger than we know,” Birrell describes how “providing developing-world girls an inexpensive way to deal with their period might be the most cost-effective liberation of human potential on the planet.”
In her story, she goes in depth on some of the extreme hardships and embarrassment young girls in Third World countries face managing their menstruation and attempting to stay in school.
Birrell provides a detailed account of how young girls in Kenya face many obstacles, oftentimes missing school and needing to drop out. Cut off from their education, young girls can become a strain on their family, but while in school, they are given mentors and opportunity and learn to protect themselves from rape. Without those resources, Birrell explains, they can be taken advantage of and face great difficulties as young women.
According to the Freedom House report for 2017, Kenya’s freedom status is “partially free” and scores a low 51 out of 100, and the score for 2018 will likely be even lower. While the country holds regular elections, there is still a high level of corruption and crime within the government.
Over the last 10 years, ODFL, has completed 95 projects. They have funded schools and clinics around the world and influenced young people to take action.
Although only operating with a staff of four—they have had tremendous success in what they have set out to do.
“Everybody wants to be a bigger person,” Birrell said. “There is a bigger person inside all of us and to bring out that bigger person, this is giving them an opportunity to do that.”