Tembea Academy: Educating Girls

I recently traveled to Kenya in order visit Tembea Academy, a school that enables girls to receive an education instead of being forced into an early marriage. 

While I was there, I met a 15 year old girl named Nashipae. Nashipae means "happiness," and yet her life was quickly becoming anything but. Because her parents, members of the Maasai Tribe, could not longer afford to support her, her father decided that he would arrange a marriage for her. He set the price at 10 cows, and began looking for an older man to "buy" his daughter. 

Instead of being married off to an older man and losing the ability to decide her own future, Tembea Academy accepted Nashipae into their school on Tuesday. Wednesday morning she was on a bus headed to school, fully sponsored by myself and some of my family members. Our sponsorships will allow for her to attend all of high school, college, and medical school in order for her to fulfill her dreams of becoming a doctor. 

Nashipae is one of countless girls in Kenya who face this same reality. Families cannot afford education, and so their daughters are forced to become wives and mothers at incredibly young ages. Education is the only way these girls are going to be able to escape from this cycle and decide their own futures. 

However, even in Kenya, education is expensive. I'm making this gofundme because these girls have set my soul on fire. They aren't sad faces that you see in a charity commerical; they are vibrant, enthusiastic, goofy, and sassy young women that I was blessed to meet and to love. These girls deserve the same ability to decide their futures that we have here in America, and I am calling upon you to help give them the lives that they deserve. 

Any amount of money that you are able to donate will go directly to educating these girls. Your money will allow these young women to change their lives, their families, their worlds. Please help me gives these girls the futures they deserve; the futures that THEY choose for themselves.