Confidence, Character and Courage for Teen Mothers
Women Like Us Achieve Program
OUR GOAL IS TO RAISE $5,000 TO SUPPORT WOMEN LIKE US ACHIEVE PROGRAM,
as we build our Confidence, Character and Courage for Teen Mothers.
With your donation you will be a part of helping us purchase soap, diapers, milk, baby formula, education and skill learning.
Meet Jane, in her own words, a teen mother at the Women Like Us Center. She is 16 years old and a mother of an 8-month-old baby.
I am Jane and I am a student at the Women Like Us Center. This is not my real name but I cannot be recognized by the man who raped me and is the father of my child. I came to the center for counseling when I was told about the center by my mother. With having a baby, I was going through a lot in 2020.
Before my baby, my family was forced to move to a small house with my three siblings and my mother. We didn’t have anything to eat at times so as a first born I had to start selling fruit in the streets to provide for the family.
Life was not easy in the streets as a young girl. I met a man who was good to me. He would buy everything I had to sell and added more money to it. He paid our rent and promised to take me and my siblings back to school. This I kept to myself and didn’t tell my mum. He was still giving me money until I started feeling sick. My mum took me to hospital only to know that I was pregnant. My mother told him I am pregnant, and he denied everything and said I should not call his number.
My mother was so stressed that she developed high blood pressure. She took me to my aunt as she could not help me, and she had other children.
After the birth I came back home but I was not ready to be a mother. I tried suicide twice, but I didn’t succeed. That’s when my mum took me to Jacky for counseling at Women Like Us Center. Here I also got to learn computer skills and sewing. This way I can get a job and pay for my child and me.
This place is a home for me. I have peace, feel loved and wanted.
I also get to be with girls like me. Our stories are different, but we all have or will have babies. Thanks to Jacky, Edwin and Women Like Us Foundation for teaching me to be a responsible mother and appreciate myself.
The goal and mission of the Women Like Us Center is to educate women and girls for stable futures both personally and economically through skills development.
We are proud of the impact we have been able to make on women, girls and their families in Nakuru, Kenya. Our Women Like Us Achieve program has created computer education and we are currently teaching 160 women per week at the Women Like Us Center. We started with sewing classes with only 16 women, and now have graduated over 300 women with a certificate for employment, realizing that in order to create better futures for teen girls in the area, we needed to start with educating the mothers and help them become economically stable.
Along with farming, poultry projects, cooking and more we most recently have developed a program for teen mothers and teen pregnancies.
Yet it is all too common. Every day in developing countries, an estimated 20,000 girls younger than 18 give birth.
Young women are coming to the center because they cannot go to school and take their baby. They have no skills or experience to take care of a baby and have been rejected by their families. Not only are some of our girls already mothers of infants, but many come to the center seeking help after becoming pregnant.
The Women Like Us Foundation is helping them find a stronger future and build economically stable lives. The Women Like Us Achieve program at the Women Like Us Center has developed a special program that helps them to understand the importance of nutrition for both themselves and their child. They learn to understand the skills of breast feeding and child caring. We also have placed the teen girls into our sewing and computer classes.