 You can engage us across all our social media platforms at Y254 channel. Engage me at Faith Mzoely across all my socials. Btw, in quarter year of 2020, a study was done by Kenya health information management and it was found that at least 11,000 girls were teenage girls were pregnant In the county of Nairobi and Kakamega county came in second and then Machakos came in third. So to demystify all these facts we have in studio our guest Tracy Molo. Welcome. Thank you very much. You can introduce yourself, tell us who Tracy is and then your social media handles please. My name is Tracy Molo, I'm a 21-year-old girl passionate about women and girl child empowerment. You can get me on my socials at Tracy Molo across all media platforms. So I'm a co-founder of the Village of Hope, a foundation whereby it's basically humanitarian so we talk to widows and orphans and get to offer them help where we can. Then I'm the program coordinator of She-Rise at Young Women Leaders Connect. Young Women Leaders Connect basically is an organization, a youth-led organization where like-minded women came together to try and combat all these issues that I can hear you talking about. So what was the motive? What pushed you into starting such an organization? Basically I will say we had women who had gone through the same issues like teenage pregnancies or women who had people who had the same experiences so we decided to come together, put our minds together and try to see what we can do in order to combat all those issues. So when we talk of teenage pregnancies it takes two to tango. There is a boy, there is a girl. So are you just talking to girls or both? You see when you talk to girls only the problem is not solved because like you just said it takes two to tango. So at first our organization mainly dwell on ladies and all that but with time we came to realize that we need to talk to the boys also because they are part of what happens they are part of the teenage pregnancies. So we had other men on board as mentors too. So you see when we go out to the field and talk to such people when the boys see other boys coming to talk to them they can they understand what's happening. Yeah they understand better what's happening. Alright. So the girls that you talk to what do they tell you that there are some of the issues that push them to the level of becoming mums when they are just patins? Most of them I will say Pavati because most people feel like I come from a background where my parents cannot afford something A something B so there's a guy out there who's like ah if I sleep with you I can give you this I can provide you with this so they decide ah why not let me go and do this and get money maybe to get my family out of such a situation and at the end of the day you find that they are pregnant and like we all know at times you get pregnant and there's no one to take care of you after that so they become teenage mums. Exactly. So when we talk of Pavati as a reason why most girls are getting pregnant when they still teens Pavati comes in a sense that these girls can't afford even sanitary pads. They are girls who have been bought who have exchanged sanitary pads for sex and they end up being teenage mums. So do you also give them like sanitary pads do you engage them in that? Ya as an organization YWLC that is we went to schools different schools like Ayane Primary in Kibera and we had programs or should I say clubs where we signed in different students so we partner with sanitary companies like always ya so when we gather sanitary towels from the companies and we also donate from our pockets we go to the schools and give them out and do you reach out to schools do you reach out to schools and talk to these girls or you wait for them to get pregnant first and then you meet them in your organization like do you randomly do it going to schools and talking to teenage girls and boys Ya maybe let's say in a month we try to go to like 3 schools and talk to them give them sanitary towels give them the help that we can in terms of mental health issues reproductive health giving sanitary towels life skills ya it's all round speaking of life skills what are some like they are teenage girls who get pregnant they get ashamed of going back to school so when you talk of life skills what do you do to this girl who is pregnant why going back to school as a teen mum what do you do to them to just improve their future life because they just don't want to go back to school first of all we try to reach to the parents or the caregivers and provide awareness to them because you know most of the people that make these girls ashamed are part of the society they are part of their families their friends so for them not to feel ashamed the caregivers the ones that we can reach to and the ones that we cannot reach to we just talk to the girls make them feel at home make them feel like we are their sisters we are their mums ya do you do vocational training ya we do vocational training for people who are maybe old and older to go back to school or people who are not willing to go back to school like the normal 844 system kcp ya so in the recent past there's been a norm like the law comes for the boy I'm sure you were the law comes for the boy when the girl gets pregnant what's your take on that personally I don't know if it may go with everyone but personally I feel like if you're above 18 or even below 18 the two have consent they give consent for them to do whatever they are doing so that they could get pregnant so I don't feel like it's really right for them to come for the boy inasmuch as girls are fragile and all that ya you know it's easy very easy to convince them but I feel like both should take accountability for their actions exactly so these girls as you talk to them and try to engage them on several issues vocational training for them to accept to go back to school how do they perform after being teen mums and they've gone back to school ya I'm so happy to see for the few that we've taken back to school they have been performing well because we've been going to their school from time to time to check on how they are performing and most of them are performing well though there are some still lagging behind but with time they'll catch up ya and so where do they live their kids like do you mind where they are kids before they go back to school because they have to be in school full time ya like I said before for most of them we talk to their caregivers their parents or their guardians ya so when it's time for them to go back to school we go and talk to their families maybe they can help take care of their kids as they go to school ya exactly okay so and what of stigma in school do you engage the teachers before they go back to school ya obviously if someone has gotten pregnant as a teenager like we all know I think there's that stigma when you go back to school everyone is laughing at you so we try as much as possible if maybe we've gotten hold of the information that the kid is pregnant and the students don't know yet we try to encourage teachers not to rub it off to other students that there's someone who is pregnant in our school or all that so by the time maybe they're coming back to school very few people know about it but in the same case there are people who live in the same environment so obviously they'll know such and such a person who is pregnant so we try to also give awareness to the teachers to be able to talk to the students and tell them that in as much as it happened we try to still embrace the girl it's okay to give them a chance to still work on their future okay and when they are in school this girl has gone back to school do you use them as let me say motivational to others like they go around telling others that you can still go back to school even if you are a teenage mum ya why not even if I was in school maybe I was pregnant and I'm in class then someone comes in and they were in the same situation like I am and after like a few years in school they've made it, they've become a lawyer they've become a teacher they've become whatever they want to be I feel motivated enough to work hard to be like them or surpass them in their different capabilities okay and they have a teenage mum has a son or a daughter how do you follow up the relationship between the mother the parents or the guardians back at home to just know if they are doing fine following up on there is a parent who cannot be so much into the daughter getting pregnant some of them might be chased away so do you like home them those who do not have a home after getting pregnant because there is just that parent who can't take a teenage kid being pregnant being pregnant okay as YWLC glad to say we have very empathetic people in our organization so some of them who are very able we've had one case of someone who was able at least she's working and all that the girl who was chased away by her parents and this woman in our organization decided to take her in until the time she finished school okay so in your organization you you provide that chance for them to have another life even after getting pregnant even after being teenage mothers and so if this teenage mother she has this kid but cannot feed the baby so do you even take care of the baby or it's none of your business okay why WLC is voluntary for most people so most of the time when an issue arises we just come on board as a group we contribute money wherever we can we call for partnerships and we go and help wherever we can so do you have partners yeah we have a few partners and still open for partnerships okay so you'll find that in most cases the teenage girl she's pregnant she has no home she's being home somewhere else and then they are just these sponsors let me say for lack of a better word who takes in this teenage girl out of his desperate situation and then ends up using her again have you encountered such situations before not at the moment but I think if we found ourselves for one of our girl in such a situation like we say before we take them back to their families and all that there is counseling there is how we talk to them to carry themselves about an issue so when I feel like when they get to certain situations they are so free to call us any of us in organization so when the issue is brought on board we can discuss and see how we can go about it okay so when you're talking to these girls about teenage pregnancies how they can avoid teenage pregnancies what do you tell them first of all we really really talk about abstinence because as a teenage I feel like it's not right to engage in sexual activities but in this generation things happen people engage in sexual activities in as much as we talk to them about abstinence we also talk to them about contraception the different types of contraceptives and how they can use them unable to counter that so you follow up on each and every girl a teenage mum you follow up each and every one of them and know how they are doing even in schools that we go each and every one of them we don't have so many people that we are how many are they how many teenage mums do you have so organization so organization is based in different counties so in different counties we have mentors there so there are different schools we deal with schools so in Nairobi we have like Kibera Ayani primary where we offer help in terms of education in terms of mental health and all that so we have like 15 girls in Ayani in Migori we have like 20 girls in different schools there are different number of girls so we divide ourselves all right I saw that you are a Tuba are you a Tuba suri yeah so what do you do on YouTube my YouTube is mainly on lifestyle first of all remind our viewers your YouTube channel you can find me on my YouTube channel at Tracy Molo so what do you do on YouTube mostly lifestyle real talk okay what do you talk in that real talk we've just started but I want to focus on maybe motherhood and issues affecting mothers are you a mother alright so lifestyle so what do you talk about lifestyle on your YouTube channel how to live around in this era ways in which we can deal with certain issues in life like depression and all that okay but there is so much competition on YouTube so how do you go around and just make sure that people are subscribing to your YouTube channel first of all I looked for a team editing group in terms of editing I make sure my work is legit good so like the teenage mums or rather the teenage girls who get pregnant don't you think that it would be educative if you put such content on your YouTube channel yeah I had that plan in place for my friends that I know who are mothers and maybe the women out there I wanted to have a segment called motherhood where I would involve different women to come and maybe give their life experiences and how they tackle the issues that they had in order to encourage the other ones so you said you're talking to boys too about teenage pregnant so what do you tell boys okay we have different things that we talk about but mainly we try to ensure that they reduce the rate at which they get into relationships while still at their teenage ages because basically basically we know that when a boy makes a girl pregnant at teenage he does not even have enough fans to cater for the kid most of them even run away they don't take responsibility so most of the time we have so many single parents and you know how hard that could be alright so I'll give you a chance to remind our viewers where they can find you on social media and then what you do and then if you want any partnership with any companies on the Teva sponsor and you can go ahead and okay on our social media platforms you can find us at Young Women Leaders Connect on Facebook Young Women Leaders Connect on Instagram and my personal accounts Tresimolo on all other platforms and Village of Hope on the same all other platforms and as Young Women Leaders Connect and Village of Hope we are open to partnerships in any form could it be mentorship financial anyway we are very open to partnerships alright sure you have learnt one or two things just like I have and they say that a home without daughters is like a spring without a source that is food for thought so find me on social media at Faith Musoli across all my social media platforms my name is Faith Musoli and goodbye