 This is why in the morning, my name is Dereva Hilawee. Time for health. I'm speaking to one and only Elena Syeku. She's a project manager who turned a philanthropist from Mararal Samburu County. She has been helping young people and the communities up there. I'm sure you understand what happens in the eastern parts of Kenya. This is a community that needs the help that we can. We're hoping one day they will catch up with the rest of the society. Not in a bad way but they need help truly. Good morning. Good morning. Happy to have you here. Thank you for having me here today. When looking at your profile, I was wondering what specific thing will I try to cover in this particular segment. But seeing your mental health activist, you will tell us how the situation has been up there. How you turned to be a philanthropist being a project manager. Maybe you left your profession and decided to do something else. And in that regard, I'm giving you an opportunity to tell us who you are and then you will be back from there. So as you've introduced me accurately, my name is Elena Syeku. I'm a project manager by profession. I left more engaging 8 to 5 job and I'm still employed but on a more flexible job. I still do project management at a software company and then now I'm a turned philanthropist. You do software company? Yes. What exactly do you do? Well, the company that I'm employed at, we do software development for governments here. So we work to enable a lot of digitization of the government services. That's what we do. Alright. Now you decided to help your people. Maybe I could say giving back to the society. You decided to go back and help your people back home. What inspired you? First of all, I am a daughter of the North. I was born and raised in Maralal, Samburu County. I came to Nairobi for university studies and then I got a job. I came to Nairobi for about 10 years. So what inspired me is I struggled with mental health myself. I had a mental health problem that after diagnosis became a mental illness which was trauma and I had suicidal thoughts. So upon getting treatment for my mental illness is when I was inspired to be an activist for mental health because even myself trying to access healthcare for my mental illness from my work and then outside was a bit difficult for me. So I decided that it's important for people to know about mental illness and it's important for people to understand what mental illness is because there is a difference explicitly between mental health and mental illness. So then after that, I guess for the past three years because this happened about three years ago when I was extremely depressed and I had suicidal thoughts and then after getting treatment I decided let me start reading more about my illness and then through that I found out that there is a lot of lack of knowledge in the general Kenyan public. So that particularly materialized to my passion which is now philanthropy. So then this year I decided that it's important for me to go back to my community and start doing work there around health and around education. So it was born out of my personal struggle. Alright and I kind of want to get your story Kedogo. Now during that period that you are going through the mental problem or the mental health should say how did you discover that you have a problem? Did you go for maybe medication? Did you go for counselling? Because we have many people who do not know they have a problem until it escalates. Yes. So I never escalated totally because I was employed full time so I started underperforming and I was a stellar performer so I started underperforming. I started sleeping a lot. I started having no interest in things that I loved doing. All my hobbies became so tiresome so I just wanted to sleep. I would cry for hours for no apparent reason. And then I remember clearly one of the most profound memories that are stuck with me is I used to work, I used to come from Mombasa Road through the southern bypass and go to my office which used to be in Kikuyu. So the bypass I was, every time I was driving across the bypass I had these suicidal thoughts that I would probably cause an accident and just die maybe all my problems would be gone. And then I stayed away from home and from engaging with my family for a period of six months. So I was always just tired and depressed and drinking a lot. I used to drink so much. Because when you are depressed you are looking for something to numb you. So alcohol was it for me. Then I think my uncle is a psychologist so he used to call me, they used to try and reach out to me and find out what's going on, why are you not talking to us and stuff like that. So then I started talking to him and he told me I think you might be depressed and I would recommend you to a counselor. So when you have a mental health problem it's important that you go to a counselor first. Then the counselor will try and counsel you through the problem tell me what your problem is, let us see why you feel this way, why do you want to take your life and then from there if it is past counseling then you can be referred to a therapist where now you can get medication. So that's how it became about. Alright, now you have gone through this process and you have decided to go back to help your people because at some point I'm sure they undergo we all undergo mental problems in different ways and could be triggered by one or the other thing but it is very different from the other person. How has your reception been up there? First it's difficult because you're dealing with people who don't understand what mental health is and even before I went back to my community there is still a problem here in Nairobi as much as we are advanced with education and knowledgeable there is still a lot of stigma surrounding mental health problems people are not confident to come out and say by the way I'm depressed and especially this particular year of 2020 where we have seen the pandemic arise which has caused a rise in loss of jobs in people stopping their education if you were to clear university or campus this year and then all of a sudden the whole year has been locked down you had plans for your life. Some friends were the people who are anchoring you down so now you are forced to go back to your culture maybe probably you are struggling up in your family so those issues just really contribute to poor mental health so starting even from here in Nairobi there has been a lack of knowledge around mental health and I keep insisting having poor mental health is not necessarily having a mental health illness it's not having an illness at all there is a difference completely and that's why I always advocate that it is important for you to go for counseling then you find out if you are ill or you are just having a mental health problem that can be managed and then up north of course there is lack of knowledge there is lack of facilities like accessing social media or accessing digital education so people there don't necessarily understand so there is a lot of work that we are putting in in terms of educating fast before we even tell you that this is a mental illness or a lot of the people have been left to deal with drugs like the common drugs there are Mira because they are cheap and illicit alcohol that is cheap so you see a lot of people are drinking and doing these drugs but they don't know why they are doing and yet it is a coping mechanism so trying to educate them fast on what mental health is and then now we come to now giving the solutions because you cannot give a solution to a problem that somebody doesn't understand very true now in your engagement with these people now that there is a communication barrier at a different age of understanding the technology what programs are you running? currently we are running programs to deal with education because one of the goals that I have is building sustainable communities and sustainable communities and compasses ensuring that the health sector is okay ensuring that people are educated and ensuring that people have food and shelter so first we are trying to educate them on how the programs that we are running are targeting the youth right now then from the youth the youth are able to educate their parents because you see the other problem that we are facing is cultural barriers because you understand these people are not as advanced as we are these people are still holding very strongly to their cultures so you cannot come and tell them that no stop this or stop that you have fast to come sit with the community so the programs that we have is sitting down with the community fast understanding their greatest need then formulating programs that actually attack or address those particular issues that they have because to you they might seem very primitive but to them they are very comfortable so you have to come back and address that so one of the things that we did quite recently in partnership with an organization that is called Naweeri Development Child Program we distributed sanitary towels and educated the girls and then also distributed solar kits to vulnerable homes and educated the families on how having at least some form of electricity will be able to enable them to continue education now ok that could be the bit of the access to education but I want to speak on this particular matter because I've heard of people who want to educate or do public education in their rural the reach of the people they will get it's always difficult because of the number people are busy now up there how many people do you reach in a day or in a particular program that you are running in a specific day ok like I will take an example of this project that we just quite finished the other day we target a specific group so we targeted about 1,162 families so we and you know you cannot do this alone and that's quite a number? yes it's quite a number and you cannot do this alone initially we targeted 800 and then we got to 1,000 which we are very very proud and we are very happy that we were able to do that one of the strategies that I had was to do this alone I must partner with organizations that are on the ground so that they can help with mobilization so that's why I partnered with Nawiri because there are local NGO covering Isyolo, Samburu Isyolo, Samburu and Marsabit counties so the program we did was across those three counties so we had mobilization done before we went there I first had to do a trip on my own and then identified the needs of the community and the dire needs was addressing the menstruation health first and then after that now is when we mobilized each town we had a team that mobilized so in each town we accessed about 290 people in one sitting so this was just phase one so we are working now towards phase two coming in November or December you just mentioned the menstrual health I remember this program sometimes back we were running on giving out the sanitary towels to some ladies and I remember stories we used to hear about some guys you are living with your dad and you can't tell them I need this and that and it has been a problem even in this country I have seen our politicians trying to advocate for better or maybe to a point where they will be free how is the situation do they understand we really struggled with first demonstration because one thing I want to understand is the culture of the people in the north is totally different from what people perceive here and then also the environmental factors they are really really contribute and I will give you an example one of the towns that we visited up north in Marsabit County they are marrying off girls because they are unable to they are unable to afford menstruation products so for them to cope is a girl once you start having your menstruation period you are married off so that you get pregnant and then we don't have to deal with the access so what we decided to do to address that is to give girls the education fast and then also give them a year supply so we distributed about 14,000 sanitary towels to this 1,000 girls so that means each girl got a full supply because then you are also looking at how many times do they menstruate so the average day of a girl the average time that they have the menstruation period is 3 days so that the sanitary towels that we left would be sufficient for a period even of 8 months then of course as we are going on with the program we will continue adding for them the other issue that we faced immensely where we are now looking at sustainability is the fact that we are not able up north there is little access to water so for you to have, for us to be able to distribute reusable sanitary towels people need to have water so if I don't have water and you are giving me reusable sanitary towels then you are not helping me then the third problem that we faced is the extreme heat conditions there so that causes for us to provide these girls with cotton made sanitary towels so we are very happy to be working with a company called Nia Zana Africa they manufacture cotton sanitary towels because one of the challenges the girls were telling us is we end up changing our sanitary pads over a period of after one hour because of the extreme heat and most of the products that are manufactured are not safe for high areas that have high heat because we are looking at 38 degrees of heat I mean you can imagine you are just sweating profusely and then the other thing is the parents come from very low income families they are not able to afford to you 50 bob per day how many 50 bob do you use if I assume do you go eat your mandazi in the morning na chahi iu nikama 30 bob you go eat your lunch na Nairobi it's expensive chapatindondo umesamani 100 bob you still using your transport so at the end of the day you are almost using about 500 shillings in Nairobi let's say if you are looking at a middle class level person but that place people don't even have access for 50 bob to buy sanitary towels so those challenges and even the parents don't understand I mean you are marrying off your daughter because you don't want the burden of affording sanitary towels so it took us a lot of energy to first educate the girls listen to them get the feedback then now provide them with safe sanitary towels that are fit for their environment very fit for their environment what we are looking at is sustainable communities we don't want to be philanthropic for the sake of being philanthropic then you are damaging the girls more than you are helping them you mentioned of the outreach being 1000 now the information that they have get how impactful has it been of sharing with other people who didn't manage to come to the sessions that you had or how impactful has your program been well at the moment we are not able to monitor the impact until after maybe 2 weeks but one of the immediate results that we got was the girls went and spoke to their people the girls went and the teachers actually were the ones who were telling us that they are very happy that they even want us to come back and do it in a full 2 hour sessions because what we were doing was just educating them on 5 components of menstruation period and then menstruation health but now the teachers told us we need to come back and make it a curriculum for them so that they are more educated each and each time but then again the impact that we are looking for is a long term impact so it's not something that we've just done once we'll still go back and target a different number of people and then go back for phase 3 and ensure by the end of 2021 we are able to reach each and every person that is within the age gap of at least 12 to 20 years old I want to take you back to mental health having been through the process and then going to up north and interacting with those young girls I'm sure you must have met one who was married of at an early age how did you help them maybe they were going through the middle problem and how was the result one of the let me take it back a bit to cultural you see I cannot come and approach your culture just like that that's why we decided as a first step is details gathering process where we gather the details that are there so first we see girls experiencing early marriages we see girls experiencing that early marriages of course gives birth to early teenage pregnancies and then we see the culture of FGM very rampant there so you find a lot of girls are very shy to even speak it took us a lot of energy to get them to speak out loud so we were having sessions where we were about 20 people in a sitting or 40 people and would ask them who wants to talk about this I know most of you have experienced this are you willing to talk none of them would be willing to talk so first you have to deal with a stigma so we are just there first of all encouraging them to tell them that we understand FGM happens we understand that most of you have been married off we understand that most of you are mothers even at your young 14-15 years old and we are not here to judge you or to tell you that this is bad we accept that this is what has happened and what we are here for is to educate you so first we try and eliminate the stigma because they are afraid they are afraid to speak up this is their culture this is what has been happening so we cannot come and tell them early childhood marriages is bad FGM girls don't do this no we come with a place of understanding the culture and then from understanding the culture we acknowledge that this has already happened to you and now how do we help you manage yourself after this has happened so now we are just having small sessions to because when we started with the 40 group we saw that people are afraid to speak so we went to small 20 group and then we went to individual conversations so after the mental mental and menstrual health conversations we had with the group we would now identify one-on-one sessions where we would sit with the girls and they would say this is what I am feeling, this is how I am going this is what is happening of course you can't tell that girl you can't advise that girl oh no run away from home where are they running to that's very wrong thank you so much and what you are doing is quite great I am giving you an opportunity to speak to someone actually I am sure you might be needing support from the other sectors of the society you need help final recommendation to be your camera tell us something well what I would require is a lot of support especially in raising funds to buy this menstruation products and also to run the programs that we have so I would I think maybe share a poster with you where you can share on your platforms and then we are able to all collectively raise funds because I cannot do it alone I can only do it by the help of many many people out there so that is what I would like to ask just appealing for people to come together and donate and support the fund drive so that we are able to reach more girls and more families within the north alright thank you so much Helene for coming and trying to tell us how the situation is out there many people would never know unless or until they have been attuned what you are doing is great Bakum thank you for keeping us company we are taking a very short musical break as we wind up this conversation then coming up next is the political segment it's going to be fire stay tuned to i2-5-4 she has been my guest Helene Nasiaku project manager and Firantro Piste in Mararal Samburu County see you in a bit my name is Dereva Hilavi good morning