Komesha FGM Sasa Campaign
Whole villages turn out for the Komesha FGM Sasa campaign
Across Laisamis, FAN has been organising large public gatherings as part of the Komesha FGM Sasa campaign, run together with ActionAid and UNFPA. These are not small meetings. Photos from recent events show entire communities under campaign banners, men and women together, with the message stated plainly: FGM stops now.
What sets this campaign apart from earlier efforts is who shows up. Past anti FGM work in the region often spoke mainly to women. Komesha FGM Sasa events bring young men into the room too, because the practice does not end if half the community is left out of the conversation.
Girls' Education
A football pitch keeps girls connected to school
FAN's girls' football team started as a small idea: give girls a reason to come to school that has nothing to do with exams. It has grown into one of the more visible parts of the education program, with regular practice sessions and a coach who works alongside teachers rather than around them.
For some girls, the team is the difference between staying enrolled through a difficult term and dropping out. It is a small intervention next to a large problem, but it works because it meets girls where they already want to be.
Community and Environment
Planting trees alongside the people who will tend them
Land rights work in Laisamis is not only about meetings and registration paperwork. FAN has also brought communities together for tree planting days, pairing youth with local officials to put trees in ground that the community itself will manage going forward.
It is a smaller story than the land rights training sessions, but it points at the same goal: land that pastoralist communities have a real stake in, not land managed for them by someone else.