Mentoring girls to be tomorrow’s leaders

Despite the registration of several organisations running mentorship programmes for women, the status of young women and girls in Kenya is still far from desirable.

In 2013, there were 148,190 registered women groups according to the 2014 economic survey, yet women’s representation in the national assembly was a dismal 19.7 per cent.

Except for judges of court of appeal and the high court, magistrates and lawyers, Kenya has not met the 30 per cent threshold for women representation in high level decision making.

And this is not just a problem in developing countries; only 24 women made it to Fortune 500 CEOs in 2014.

Gerald Maithya, the Barclays Chief of Staff, has always wondered about this.

In 2005, inspired by the death of his autistic sister in 1985 — Gerald founded an organisation that not only paid the fees of the beneficiaries  girls but also got involved with their lives.

The Precious Sisters Foundation, as he named it, would lead the way when it came to engaging women empowerment programmes.

“When we went beyond monetary support, the results started to show in grades and the girls’ countenance changed,” says Gerald.

He chose to begin his sponsorship, and later mentorship, in Precious Blood Secondary School, Kilungu, starting with four girls.

Even with the assurance of a roof over their heads and food to eat, the performance of the girls’ he had sponsored left a lot to be desired.

“I asked other people who run programmes such as mine what they did to receive brilliant results, and they told me to get involved in the girls’ lives,” he says. Gerald brought on writer Muthoni Garland, her husband Wallace and other volunteers on board to talk to the young women.

Being aware of the intimate way in which young women experienced poverty, Muthoni Garland explains that what binds women to mediocrity and poor performance at the work place is not only material need but also the manner in which they have been socialised.

“Some of these young girls come from genuinely disturbing backgrounds with stories of rape, physical abuse, neglect and despair. Anybody’s perception about life would be tainted under such circumstances” she says. “When these are not sorted, they will not be productive corporate figures even with perfect grades,” Muthoni adds.

One of the beneficiaries — 24 year old Imelda Muli — graduated from Cincinnati’s Xavier University with a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry.

Imelda, who could barely look up when introducing herself when she was brought to the school, is now a confident young woman.

Another of the pioneer girls, 21 year old Florence Randari, is an economics student in the USA.

Randari who came from an impoverished home in Kitui, conquered her shyness and insecurity to be bold enough to volunteer her mathematics tutorship skills in the homes of troubled teenagers in the US.

“It was very liberating to be allowed you to talk about the pains you have been harbouring and to have someone being interested in your grades… it eliminated a lot of self-doubt, the involuntary defensive reaction to every challenge,” says Randari.

Apart from regular visits to the schools, volunteers such as Muthoni engages the girls in public speaking and debates where they are asked to give their opinions about case studies.

“A productive person cannot be fixated on one answer to situations... unfortunately, that is what even educated young women bring to the workplace and the society because it is what they have been socialised to accept,” Muthoni says adding that:

“They have been made to acknowledge only hierarchical authoritarian system where anyone in position of authority is right and everyone else is wrong.”

Sadly, this leaves women with very high academic competencies but very little social intelligence that is needed for them to succeed in the murky water of corporate culture.

Muthoni’s observation echoes a concern that was raised by a recruitment firm last year that women are less confident in their presentation during job interviews, a situation that contributes to potential employers ignoring them.

Perminus Wainaina, a consultant at a Corporate Staffing — a recruitment agency with a database of more than 30,000 academic testimonials of potential job seekers in Kenya— said that most women graduates lacked ‘soft skills’ that form decisions on whether they would be promoted, hired or not.

Notably, entering a mentorship programme has been identified as one of the most effective coping strategies used by women to manage being in male dominated corporate culture.

Wallace Garland, one of the personnel overseeing the The Precious Sisters Foundation mentorship programme, says that he insisted to the volunteer mentors that the girls should be allowed to talk more than they listen.

“The girls are used to being talked to, not listened to,” he intones.

“Some of them come from very difficult homes and therefore they cannot talk about what disturbs them at home obviously, they won’t talk about it in school because they do not want to look silly,” says Wallace.

The programme provides a safe environment where the girls are assured that whatever they say will not be used against them or be shared.

“We ask them ‘last time we were here you have having trouble concentrating how far are you from achieving that’ and those kinds of questions borne out of our previous discussions,” says Wallace.

From Gerald Maithya’s little dream in 2005, The Precious Sisters Foundation has grown from sponsoring four girls in once school, to hundreds in three other schools in Precious Blood Riruta, Bishop Ngandu Gatimu and Starehe Girls.