Kakenya Ntaiya

Kakenya Ntaiya (born 1978) is a Kenyan educator, feminist and social activist. She is the founder and president of the Kakenya Center for Excellence and recipient of the CNN Top Ten Hero of the Year (2013)

Quotes

"Kakenya Ntaiya: Making Dreams of Education a Reality for Girls Everywhere"

As interviewed on Paradigm Shifters series by huffpost.com Updated Dec 6, 2017

• I knew that I wanted something different. So, instead of focusing on being intimidated, I focused on education. I focused on going to school and making sure I stayed there.
• If you want to get married, you can get married. You have to choose to whom you get married and when the right time is. Marriage is a lot of work. But there is no pressure, the time will come, and there are a lot of men out there!
• But when you give a girl an opportunity, she will never, ever embarrass you or let you down.
• I could've easily given up but I didn't. All my breakdowns are breakthroughs. I believe I need them in order to push through.

"Kakenya Ntaiya exchanged female genital mutilation for an education, now runs school for girls in Kenya"

as interviewed on www.abc.net.au/news

• I wanted to continue with school because my mother was denied an education and she always told us if she went to school she would have been a different person, so I talked to my dad and told him I can only go through the genital mutilation if he lets me go back to school.
• I went through the genital mutilation not knowing what it was.
• I was told it's what will make me a woman. I didn't know that it's something that is done very... it's horrible, you are cut, your genitalia is cut, no anesthesia, you bleed and some people die out of it.
• I'm lucky, I only fainted and came back to life.
• My education has enabled me to learn about it and now I stand against it and stand so that no other girl can go through that.
  • “If the women of my homeland had access to education, they could choose what to do with their lives. And that would be a real change, and I would feel I had paid my debts.”

[[1]]

• • "I am deeply proud of my Maasai heritage, but I have always opposed the patriarchal social norms and expectations that keep women and girls in our community from achieving their full potential."
  • "When the time came to fulfill my promise to return home and support my community, I knew that creating a pathway to education and freedom for girls, like the one I had created for myself, would be the best way to give back. So I founded Kakenya’s Dream in 2009 to do just that."
  • "In the back of my mind, I always knew that no girl should have to make the kind of sacrifice I did, undergoing FGM, just to continue her education. It became my life’s purpose to ensure that no other girl would."

[[2]]

• • "Three weeks later, I was healed and was back in high school. I was more determined to be a teacher now so that I could make a difference.”
  • " “I learned that ceremony I went through is called female genital mutilation. I learned that it was against the law in Kenya. I learned that I did not have to trade part of my body to get an education."[[3]]