MADRID, Spain — Asha Ismail, 54, is a human rights activist and founder of Save a Girl Save a Generation. She was born in Garissa, Kenya, but now lives in Spain and runs her own NGO. The organization, which operates out of Madrid, focuses on upholding the human rights of women in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Ismail has years of history working on issues related to women’s rights, specifically genital mutilation and forced marriage. Through her organization Save a Girl Save a Generation, Ismail also prioritizes empowering women through education.
Powering Up Girls Through Education
Ismail was featured in a documentary called Eve’s Apple (La manzana de Eva), a film that discusses the reality of female genital mutilation. In 2020, the Madrid government offered her an award for her efforts regarding human rights. However, Ismail humbly declined the award, explaining that accepting it was not “coherent with her principles and the work that she does.”
Ismail also has other passions: empowering women through education, specifically through the Power Up a Girl Through Education project. In an interview with The Borgen Project, Ismail says that ending in 2020, when schools in Kenya closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this project saw major success. While this initiative did not receive significant funding, through the project, Ismail helped more people than she had originally planned. “The total was 50 girls helped,” she says.
Ismail explains that the initiative aimed to provide four girls from Guatemala and five girls from Kenya with school supplies, such as textbooks and solar-powered lamps. The initiative also paid for the girls’ enrollment at boarding schools. Because commuting from home is not an option for most of the girls, boarding school presented an ideal option as the girls did not have to worry about lacking the means to travel to and from school, resolving transportation barriers.
The initiative strategically placed each of the girls in different classes and the girls shared their textbooks and solar-powered lamps with five or more other girls. While Ismail knew that her initiative would help girls to a certain degree, she did not know it would help almost 50 girls.
Addressing Barriers to Education
Solar lamps are necessary in countries such as Kenya, where some households do not have electricity access. According to the World Bank, only around 62.7% of the rural population in Kenya had access to electricity in 2020. Poverty is also a crucial issue in Kenya with around 36% of the population falling below the national poverty line in 2015. When families do not have electricity, children and women cannot study at night. However, with solar lamps, the girls can rely on solar-powered energy to provide light for reading and studying after daylight hours, which allows them to maintain their education.
This initiative is one of the many projects that Ismail works on at the NGO. Most of her time at Save a Girl Save a Generation centers around other projects related to violence against women. However, Ismail is still passionate about empowering women through education. She explains how Power Up a Girl through Education worked with a group of women volunteers from Africa and Latin America. The organization also partnered with another NGO called Acción en Red in order to carry out its goal for this education project. “The women wanted to give back, so we joined forces,” Ismail said.
Power Up a Girl Through Education also worked to provide other types of school supplies. Some girls in Kenya received reading material relevant to the Kenyan educational system while others received school uniforms.
Safia Ahmed, one of the girls helped by the Power Up a Girl Through Education initiative, even received a scholarship to study at one of Kenya’s top schools located in the capital city of Nairobi.
Issues Impacting Girls and Women in Kenya
As the Save a Girl Save a Generation website explains, many women who cannot go to school end up in child marriages. According to Girls Not Brides, 23% of girls in Kenya enter into marriages before turning 18. Save a Girl Save a Generation seeks to combat this.
Ismail also explains that young women in Kenya typically drop out of school when they begin menstruating. This is usually due to a lack of feminine hygiene products and bathroom facilities to properly manage menstruation as well as a lack of education surrounding sexual and reproductive health. Period poverty is still a reality in Kenya. According to a menstrual health analysis in Kenya, around “65% of women and girls in Kenya are unable to afford sanitary pads.”
Ismails’ Recent Projects
In 2021, Save a Girl Save a Generation was met with two cases involving young girls. “… their options were either getting sponsors to go to secondary school or getting married,” Ismail says. Ismails’ organization took on the task of sponsoring the girls’ education and helping them to enroll in classes at school. This is another example of how Ismail’s organization works to empower women through education.
Save a Girl Save a Generation’s most recent project involved training 40 women. The organization named the project Kuelekea Mabadiliko — a Swahili phrase that translates to “moving toward change.” The women participating in this project are illiterate and have never attended school, but are trying to educate themselves in order to be able to perform on a professional level. Save a Girl Save a Generation is working to train these women on topics such as nutrition, hygiene, health and sexual education. Because many of the women have not received a formal education, the organization provides image-based training on these topics.
Looking Ahead
Overall, Ismali is a pioneer in empowering women through education. From training illiterate women to paying for Kenyan girls’ school tuition, Save a Girl Save a Generation is making significant efforts to ensure the education of girls and women. These efforts not only make waves nationally but also help poverty-stricken girls and women internationally.
– Timothy Ginter
Photo: Flickr