Hello,
My name is Atuhurra Marjorie Angella and I am the founder of Gejja Women Foundation which envisions at a world where rural women are economically empowered so as to be self sustainable. (more for all gejja)
ABOUT ME
I was born by two school going children of 14 and 16, growing up without parental love, care and guidance, i underwent a series of challenges ranging from dropping out of school, due to menstruation. Lacking knowledge about the most pressing issue on menstruation, later led me to be forced into early marriage and into becoming a young mother .
But a new journey started when i joined the Social Innovation Academy in 2014 an organisation born by a German NGO called Jangu ev. A place where youth are supported to create social enterprises. I too was mentored and successfully completed the program thus starting the Gejja Women Foundation in 2016.
WHAT WE DO
GEJJA; is a word in one of the local languages in Uganda literally meaning Grow Big. We are mainly empowering rural marginalized widows, teen mothers and school dropouts to become social entrepreneurs so as to change their lives,families and community. (more for all gejja)
Together with my team, we chose to work on four aspects ranging from Educational support, Permaculture Training and Women Start Ups to Menstruation and Menstrual Hygiene Training.
In many developing countries like Uganda, women and girls often times lack access to quality sanitary products to use during menstruation. Uganda alone, notes that at least 84% of young people living in rural areas cannot reliably access and afford sanitary pads therefore an estimated 3.75 million Ugandan girls are living without adequate menstrual knowledge,believe in false taboos and their is stigma around the whole menstrual issue.
Many of the girls and women rely on using filthy, unhygienic,ineffective and uncomfortable materials. These range from traditional materials like old pieces of cloth,pieces of mattresses, toilet paper, leaves and banana fibers.This in the long run sometimes leads to girls dropping out of school, getting married at tender ages of 12, their parents who earn less than a Euro or Dollar a day which is not enough to run the daily expenses of the family,tend to let early marriage of the girls to rich village chiefs as a source of income to the family.
Gejja women foundation,trains women and girls on how to make reusable sanitary pads,
we also give trainings on menstruation and menstrual hygiene,where we teach about the female reproductive system how to track their cycles,during the training our peer educators give cahnce and space to students to ask questions in order to dispel myths and taboos,thus providing facts
We started our campaigns late in 2016,where we trained 10 schools in the northern Uganda
Since that day, our work has improved. in 2017 we carried out trainings in Mpigi where we reached 40 schools, training over 200 girls and boys.Boys are not left out in our trainings because we believe that them too create much impact if they know about the menstruation and menstrual hygiene.Year 2018, has been so far so good that we have carried out training in 20 schools so far and we hope to aim higher.
Gejja Women Foundation through the campaigns in rural schools and communities is able to address this challenge, creating hope and also offering training to women and girls how to make their own sanitary pads that are long lasting, comfortable and are environmentally friendly. We hope to have trained over 5000 women, men and girls in this year 2018.
We provide scholarships to the school going girl children and adult education to the rural women. in this we provide scholastic materials, school fees and necessary material to enhance better learning, reduce on the cases of dropping out of school and forced early marriages that are many in the rural areas especially in the community of Mpigi.
We also practice permaculture. Planting vegetables and fruit trees, this is mainly carried out in local government schools and rural communities to supplement on the nutrition and the surplus is sold to earn money for the children in schools and homes.
Under the women startups, this is when we offer mentoring and coaching to our women who come up with ideas through the design thinking process and later begin social enterprises that are not only adding value to themselves, also to their families and communities.
FUTURE PLANS AND WHY IT MATTERS
Gejja women Foundation has been operating from a small hut where all our women and girls meet. This one room comprises of our office, classrooms for adult Education, Training space for menstrual hygene and production of the reusable pads as well as women projects like wine making, crafts, book making among others. Our current space is located in the outskirts of the community and is therefore hard for the women and girls to access.
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT US
We have now identified a piece of land that has buildings that can be used as a women center.It is within the community, easily accessible and the rooms can greatly be integrated for all our activities and programs.This center will allow young girls and old women to make a sustainable living out of what they are passionate about, transform their lives, and become social entrepreneurs and job creators.Through self-organization and *Freesponsibility*, these women will transform their own personal tragedies and tackles the most pressing issues in their local communities.
A place that will act as a home, a healing center for those traumatized, a breeding of Empowerment innovations for rural women.
As the Gejja women, we cannot do this alone, that is why we believe in your support, whatever little money you have can help us create the Women Center. Be part of this team to bring prosperity among the Vulnerable women of Mpigi, Uganda.
