Background of GirlBe
In 2011, Rehema, a teenager coming of age with a refreshingly vibrant outlook on life founded GirlBe. At the time, driven by her deep childhood fractures, she was determined to support girls in low-income communities to figure out a way to serve their needs immediately. For nearly a decade now, GirlBe was run as a homework support group to make it a little easier for the girls to stay in school. However, through daily interactions with the girls, it was evident that helping them with their homework was not enough. Their immediate needs were way beyond just the homework and required a more holistic approach. Two years later in 2013, GirlBe grew into a community embedded program that excelled in being a safe and fun space for girls to commune, to access scholarships, to study and to participate in creative practices. Being embedded in community helped us to learn that the biggest challenge in the community was that a lot of girls were being sexually harassed, getting pregnant and dropping out of school consequently yet no one was successfully addressing it.
Take Anita for example. She got pregnant at 13 and was sent away from home for being an embarrassment. Since she had nowhere else to go, she got married. Even when at GirlBe we arranged a scholarship for her, she was advised by her family to remain married and even gave birth to her second child at the expense of her future. Teenage moms like Anita and Shadia have no fair chance of redefining their destiny.
It became clear that for GirlBe’s programs to achieve the desired long-term impact, the teenage moms needed to change the environment. They needed to get out of the communities that continue to undermine their rights as children to a safe stigma-free environment that would facilitate their healing process and enhance their concentration on education.