 First guest is in studio and she goes by the name Night Mouteti and she is the founder of the organization Daughters of Kenya that seeks to empower women and girls. Yes, welcome to the show Night. Thank you. How are you feeling today? I'm good. So kindly introduce yourself and tell us a bit about Daughters of Kenya organization. Okay, my name is Night Mouteti. I'm the founder and executive director of Daughters of Kenya. Daughters of Kenya is an organization that seeks to change and to improve the lives of the girls, the vulnerable and young mothers. It's registered as a national trust. So currently we are working in Machakos County, Nairobi County, Narok and Kajado Counties. Okay, so since you were the founder, when was the organization founded and why did you decide to take that direction? Well, actually growing up in the village is a small girl. My dad was a community leader. He was a human rights defender. I think kinda I like what he did for the vulnerable communities and I carried it along with me. And after I finished my high school, I decided to pursue my degree in social work. I did B.A. in social work university of Nairobi and that way I was able to learn more about community and I did my first internship with GIZ, a program that was funded by UNHCR. It was urban refugee assistant program. That time I was in that day or something. After I worked with women organizations, actually more of women department in other organizations. The first organization I work is a gender officer. The second organization I work in the programs is the COCAS for Women Leadership. Okay, so you decided to work with women for what particular reason? Is it because your dad was strong? I think I have something special for women. As I told you, I grew up in a country and somehow it touches me when you see vulnerable girls in school, they lack power, no one can help them. And I had that thing in me. I want to change the lives of the vulnerable girls. I just felt I want to change these lives. What will I do to do this? And that's how I started Daughters of Kenya. I haven't seen vulnerability myself and I said now it's time for me to speak to them for the first place. That's how I started Daughters of Kenya. When we say vulnerable, what is it that we are talking about? Which type of women and girls are we talking about? When we talk about vulnerable, it comes in a big picture. I may be vulnerable. Vulnerable is not exactly to be in poverty. For instance, I'll give a very general example. Women are discriminated everywhere, not only in Africa but also in the world, Europe, countries and even U.S. You find that women most of the time they get lesser jobs and that's the question that has been, why the girls are not the boy child, why? Because we are trying. That's why even the theme for this International Day of the Girl is my voice, our future. We are trying to enable these girls to have the future, speak about themselves, their dreams, their inspiration. We are trying to inspire them to be part of the lead team so that their future can be great. We want an equal future whereby girls can access jobs despite them going for maternity, lives and those calls that women go as mothers. They can be economically empowered, educationized. And in Daughters of Kenya we have three programs, education and violence, again as girls which is entering GBV in general, that includes entering child marriage, into GBV, I mean sexual, GBV, yeah, and entering FGM. Those are some of the things that kind of make girls to be discriminated. And we have economic empowerment for sustainability. So between what age do you work with girls? Maybe teenagers, young girls. For the girls we are very interested in the teenagers all the way to 24 years. Actually we work within that age because you can be a young mother from as young as 9 years and we work with the young mothers up to 25 years. Yes, that's our interest. However we can extend our, but that's our interest in Daughters of Kenya up to 24 years, girls, teenage girls and young mothers. And you've said that you have programs. Yes. And when you approach young girls or women or maybe they come to you, what are some of the major problems that you find and you deal with? Well, starting with our programs you'll find that they are interlinked with the problems that we find in our girls. For instance, Lester Education, I talked about discrimination. You find that women are somehow, some communities see girls as assets. For instance, if you give back to girls people just say, they will get married. Some people just say, wow, this is dowari. They don't see the big picture, girls can change the world. And we as daughters of Kenya, we work with organizations like Kenya Institute of Social Work and Community Development where we have partnered and been able to to sponsor some of the girls. And also we are starting the Kenya Institute of Entrepreneurship. I mean, Daughters of Kenya Institute of Entrepreneurship under the education sector of Daughters of Kenya because this institute will come with importing them in some entrepreneur projects like catering, like technology, what you call it, garment technology. Actually we do artisan, basic certificate and diploma. And we are trying to connect and work closely with the corporates that can be able to to take some girls by the hand of the program and we empower them economically. So education is a basic sector. Economic empowerment is it another. But we can't, that's why we say educate, rescue, educate and empower. Rescue is the way of getting them from their vulnerability. Educate, you have to educate them. Then after they are educated now you empower them. So most of these young women and young girls, do they come to you or do you find them? Most of them write to us but as I told you the places that where we work we don't work alone. We work with many communities in the ground. We work with the community leaders, the change makers, the gate keepers in the community and of course we can't work without the local administration. So a lot of referral is done to us. That's how we get the county health workers. That's how we've been working. Okay, interesting. So during this period where COVID-19 hit the country there were so many cases reported of gender based violence. Did you have such and maybe how did you deal with them? Yes, we've experienced a lot of teenage pregnancies I think you see and also GBV. We are very grateful to our partners who have come on board. We've been able to do a lot of sensitization to our girls and some mothers we've been able to do a lot of what you call it like mentorship we have mentorship projects we've done a lot. If you go to our Facebook page and our Twitter pages you see the kind of work we've done and we believe we've changed the community because during the COVID time our explanation is that we've reached up to around 800 girls. Yes, we've done that. We've reached girls in Longomachakos, Kibra Eswais Westpukot we partner with other organizations we've been able to provide the sanitary paths and then talking to them we just don't go and give them the sanitary paths. You have to mentor them, you have to empower them you have to identify leaders in them who can lead even when you're not there we work with the girls and for kids who come and represent us on the ground that kind of thing. So tomorrow is a special day for your organization tell us about the holiday that you will be celebrating tomorrow. Wow, is it tomorrow? It's this month. Oh, it's the entire month. Yes, because we've been celebrating about the International Day of the Girl International Day of the Girl which is tomorrow but this week we've been celebrating we see that we've partnered with organizations in Kenya because it's the International Day of the Girl and the theme is my voice our future just what we are taking about so ideally we want the girls first to be heard so that they can have an equal future it doesn't mean that when we talk about gender equality we are not trying to get the place of men no, no, no we want girls not to be discriminated and to afford some of this traditional traditional like GBV GBV child marriage these are some of the things that make girls life to be backward and they never progress in life and that's what we've been doing we did a big celebration with the entire we had actually you can see what I'm wearing girls not brides Yeah, daughters of Kenya is a member of girls not brides and in Kenya we have the end child marriage network whereby daughters of Kenya is part of it and part of the coordination team and yesterday we had a very big celebration yeah, we thanked the government we partnered with the government and many stakeholders other organizations throughout the country and we were celebrating the entire day actually the celebration as I told you, as already started yeah, and daughters of Kenya we had a presentation we had other organizations like Khamref, South Africa yeah, Plan International who are the co-convenants in Kenya yeah, for girls not brides yeah, and it was a great thing and we are still celebrating actually it's not only two mothers so once you rescue you empower what is the other? no, we rescue when we talk about rescuing it's like removing them from those situations they may come to you they may be referred to you they may anyhow you get these girls you educate them education is not only taking them to school teaching these girls to know their rights to know what they need in life trying to that kind of thing yeah, to understand themselves now you empower them empowerment also is not only giving them skills these are about life skills they need to have life skills they need to understand themselves and now try to channelize them so once all these things are done do you follow up with the girls and maybe find out how their progress is going and maybe talk to us about a few of your beneficiaries wow, yes as you know daughters of Kenya is still a baby we are not yet five years old but we've done a lot currently we have who have already finished their school and now some of them are working with us one was in Kenya institute of social and community development she was supposed to graduate this year but you know what happened at the confed but currently she is working with us that's one way of empowering them and we also do a lot of follow up you know they are those big projects but girls we are always working with them in the community and they ask we have some are just part of daughters of Kenya talk about daughters of Kenya they tell you I am a girl from daughters of Kenya I am part of daughters of Kenya okay so if someone wanted maybe to reach out to you and the organization how would they do so? we have our website www.dottosofkenya.ru www.dottosofkenya.ия www.dottosofkenyah.ru www.dottosofkenyah.ru www.dottosofkenya.ru participation www.dottosofkenyah.ru Who includes traditional Chinese sources a message internet www.dottosofkenyah.ru nd also you can find us on our Twitter pages www.dottosofkenyah.ru www.dottosofkenyah.ru www.dottosofkenyah.ru I told you we work in the four countries I mentioned to you But we can work in the stage by stage Deventing on their filability of resources Yes, sure What if a company or organization wanted to join Yes, it's about partnership They can write to us They can approach us And then we may have an MOU and see how we can work together Yes So thank you so much for coming Thank you We appreciate your time And keep empowering the ladies They really need it Okay, thank you Thank you so much for your time And as we finish We were asking in the morning Is love a feeling or a choice? What do you think? Love, my God It can be a choice of course It can be a choice Yeah, it's a feeling To me it's a feeling It can be a choice Because you need to be happy You need to be at peace with yourself So you need to It's not about choices You need to feel good yourself For you to go ahead and You need to be at peace with yourself You feel good within yourself It's something inside I don't know what people are saying on social media If you can get some of the comments We want to check the limits Yes, very good Uh, ha Oh uh Jump Jump Gangaji I was talking about Imanena I was just saying all that stuff But I had a few comments Lemise, lemise Mkowa pinkowa p There, there you go We have Rogy Pozik Kei e So anase moshiwa equalit Dijinesh kei ebunichese Wanani remix Yende wa tuwangu Ngubu hapa Judja Joshua Wasua Reson Barasa Jackson Barasa Francis Barasa Masit Kolokta Padukyo Fred Kinyozy Alafu Gotia Krashwangu Kawahida Ivan If Nyaga Nabygman Bazo Mika Muziki Alafu Upcoming Artist One day Anataka Minalike So I will talk to you We have Bran Keni Menadze But sorry Also I have Jesse O Yambisi Osiyambu Asema Kamakawida Moji Shoti Boba Ikuze Kwa Playlist Tony Barton Oksikipale Odongo Asembo Djangoma Asema Green DJ Elvis Locked Kwa Sho Nyangushie Kidungia Bagi Genze Naomi Locked from Kitale Lynette Asema Nice One Joshua Kimongi Yo Yo Kimongi Kutokasagashu Ikotopumbaya Nipe Moza We talk about Kenyan music Kenyan music Ya tisha maboko Maboko nina Tisha kusumila Ok And remember to cast your votes Today battle of the best is between Sanipi Tandi Vasis Avril Both of them are dope Grades Kamakawida But we just want to know Who is it that you love more? And we'll be playing their music back to back At around 11.30 So stay tuned We are taking a short musical break Don't you go anywhere