

WOMEN EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM
Reducing Gender-Based Violence and Achieving Positive Peace by Empowering Women Affected & Infected with HIV in the Slums of Kisumu, Kenya.
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THE CHALLENGE
According to the World Bank, over the past decade, Kenya has made significant political, structural and economic reforms that have largely driven sustained economic growth, social development and political gains. However, Kenya’s key development challenges still include poverty, inequality, climate change and the vulnerability of the economy to internal and external shocks. More than 1 billion people in the world live in extreme poverty (defined as living on $2 or less per day) and many of them are women. Recent research suggests that while both men and women suffer the consequences of living in a cycle of poverty, women have fewer resources to deal with sustained, intergenerational extreme poverty.
Many women in Sub-Saharan Africa, like Kenya, are disproportionately affected by HIV. In 2016 alone, 34,000 adult women were infected with HIV, compared with 22,000 adult men. Adult women accounted for 910,000 of the country’s 1.6 million people living with HIV. According to UNAids, women also face sexual and reproductive health challenges such as limited access to family planning and stigma and discrimination when seeking services. Women and girls make up about 50.1% (Kisumu Population Data) of the total population of the slums of Kisumu City and the gross inequalities and inhuman conditions they endure in such areas both as a result of poverty and poor infrastructural development and in general is a key factor contributing to Kisumu city’s extremely poor human development index in the slum areas. The situation of women and girls in Kisumu slums is particularly dire and presents real concerns for prospects for fair treatment, access to justice, and overall human rights protection.
MORE ABOUT THE PROGRAM
ABOUT THE PROJECT
In 2021, Hobbs Rotary Club, other Clubs of the District of New Mexico 5520, the Kisumu Central Rotary Club and District 9212 officially joined efforts to make this project a reality and make a positive impact in one of the most vulnerable populations in Kenya and the world. Both organizations, United4Change Center for International Development & Global Citizenship (U4C), and Women Arise for Positive Change (WAPC), a community-based organization in Kenya that works with women and children living with HIV/AIDS in the urban slums of Kisumu, Kenya (both led by Rotary Peace Fellows), have the expertise and capability to work alongside active Rotarians to implement a Global Grant project.
The project aims to empower up to 120 women in three slums of Kisumu (Manyatta, Nyamasaira and Nyalend) who have been infected with HIV and thereby adversely affected. We propose to create Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in at least three community-led centers that will empower women to make positive changes for themselves and their families, thereby lessening the debilitating discrimination they face as a consequence of their HIV infection.
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HOW YOU CAN HELP
We have been working to address increasing issues stemming from volatile currency exchange rates, inflation, supply chain challenges and the surge of Covid-19 variants. Your partnership will increase our collective capacity to completely transform the lives of Kenyan women so that they become confident, self-reliant and able to lift others in their communities out of similar life circumstances.
Join us and support this transformational Program in Kenya!

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