Education the key for women
WHEN nursing student Genevieve Radnan spent six weeks as a volunteer teaching English to children in a small Kenyan village last year, she noticed an eight-year-old malnourished boy in one of her classes.
WHEN nursing student Genevieve Radnan spent six weeks as a volunteer teaching English to children in a small Kenyan village last year, she noticed an eight-year-old malnourished boy in one of her classes.
She decided to visit the boy’s family to see if she could help, and what she observed alarmed her. “He was one of eight children. The mother was uneducated and completely illiterate, and the father worked for $US1 a day,” the 20-year-old recalled. “You can’t feed a family of 10 on that.”
The meeting was a turning point for Radnan. While she provided the family with food for the rest of her stay, she decided the only way to make a truly profound change was to educate the boy’s mother, along with the other disadvantaged women in the village, by creating a women’s centre in Karunga.
“If the mother was more sufficiently educated, her opportunities for work would be greater,” she said. “Providing an education system for women is the key.”
Radnan recently pitched the idea in a video to Project Inspire, an initiative of the United Nations Women Singapore and MasterCard, which aims to create better opportunities for women and children in the Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa.
Her team is now among 10 finalists competing for a $25,000 grant to turn their idea into a reality, and they are urging the public to vote for their proposal on Project Inspire’s website.
The proposed centre is named Grandma Jenny’s Women Centre, after Radnan’s grandmother who left high school at 13 and learned a trade to support her family.
The facility would offer a 10-week training program, educating women in a variety of areas, such as sewing, financial literacy and maths. The local clinic would provide free health education and counselling.
“My grandmother is a living example of the benefits education can have,” said Radnan, a former Emanuel School student. “She not only provided for her immediate family, but generations beyond have reaped the benefits. If you educate a women, you educate a society.”
Regardless of the competition’s result, Radnan insisted she would forge ahead with the project. “It will be built,” she said.
To vote in support of Genevieve Radnan’s Project Inspire proposal, go to www.5minutestochangetheworld.org/vote.
CHANTAL ABITBOL
Empowering African women: Genevieve Radnan in Kenya last year
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