Nurturing leadership skills of young girls with disabilities: Spotlight on FEDWEN


The Federation of Deaf Women Empowerment Network (FEDWEN Kenya) is a strong member of our Network and is doing amazing work with Deaf women and girls. Fedwen is one among three Network members who are implementing activities that seek to nurture the leadership skills of young girls with disabilities under the Network. Read more about our Ford Foundation grant here.

On 29th March, the Fedwen team made its way to the Rev. Muhoro School for the Deaf, where they have brought together young Deaf girls and boys whom they intend to support in this leadership trajectory, a process that is geared towards supporting the young girls and boys in meaningful civic engagement in their communities.  Rev. Muhoro School for the Deaf is situated in Nyeri County, a few kilometers from Karatina town, close to a three-hour drive from Nairobi city. The school rests in a picturesque place. Beautiful hilly landscapes with a river flowing between the hills are a few landmarks that give someone a sense of serenity as they approach the school. 

One inspiring thing about the Fedwen team is that it is made up of Mentorship Program Officers and one of the Mentors is Videliz Njoki who is part of the Women Leaders with Disabilities under our previous Ford Foundation grant. See her bio on this link at #5:  https://advocacynetwork.blogspot.com/2023/08/my-journey-women-with-disabilities-in.html

The young girls and boys that Fedwen shall work with are in Forms 2 – 4. They shall be accompanied on this trajectory by two teachers as facilitators and closely working with Fedwen mentors. Rev. Muhoro as a school is primarily for Deaf learners. There is also a 30% population of hearing students who are required to learn sign language to be able to communicate with the Deaf learners. This is a great thing as it also supports the Network in our endeavors to create allyship between girls with and without disabilities in our projects.

When it comes to supporting the young girls and boys to promote self-determination by helping them to set and achieve personal and civic goals, at Network level we are pursuing a collaboration with the KU Center on Disabilities to adapt the Self-Determined Learning Model of Instruction (SDLMI) that is used by teachers to enable students to: Set goals; Make choices and decisions; Develop plans to reach goals; Track progress toward goals.

Rich, insightful

In our conversations with the young girls and boys at Rev. Muhoro who shall be part of this project, we acknowledge that we are starting on a very inspiring trajectory, where we have young girls and boys who have a self-awareness about the issues within their surrounding that they would wish to influence.

“Discrimination happens,” said one.

“I would want to be a great person,” said another.

“If I wanted to become a pilot and since I am Deaf, is it a problem,” yet another asked.

When Videliz  shared her story and engaged them in responding to some of the questions they had, it was so beautiful to see the connections they felt towards her. For these young girls and boys to not only see but also get the experiences of fellow Deaf persons who, just like them, understand what it means to face difficulties, and of course, for Videliz, having conquered some obstacles along the way was so inspiring for the youngsters. Vincent Owino is another mentor from FEDWEN, who just like Videliz, took time to share his own lived experiences as a way to encourage young girls and boys in their journey of life.

“As Deaf people there are less choices for us,” said Rahab Kimatu, FEDWEN Program Officer. “We must challenge this, we can be all we want to be, we can do all we want to do,” she said. It was clear to see this from both Videliz and Vincent’s stories, especially when it came to accessing education, the system did not accommodate them and their dreams. It for example meant someone being dissuaded from taking a certain course, for example, Law, and being pushed to study Education against their wishes.  It therefore made a lot of sense that the words ‘Never give up’ came up a lot.

As we said our goodbyes, we carried with us immense hope about the future of the activities and are looking forward to the next steps that Fedwen shall make with the youngsters.


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