KEEP

What we have learned from our work to improve girls’ education in Kakuma and Dadaab Refugee Camps and the surrounding host communities in Turkana, Garissa and Wajir counties in Kenya It has been a decade since WUSC and its partners launched the Kenya Equity in Education Project (KEEP). In that time, we have developed key…

On March 15, 2020, the Government of Kenya closed schools nationwide in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, millions of children’s education has been severely disrupted, leaving significant gaps in learning. For girls, in particular, being out of school for such a long period of time also increased their vulnerability to sexual and…

Increasingly, education systems are challenged to deliver education services in adverse contexts such as natural disasters, political crises, health epidemics, pervasive violence, and armed conflict. The year 2020 was no exception, as health systems around the world struggled to cope with the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Kenya, the first COVID-19 case was…

Since 2016, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of refugee representation in policies and decisions that impact the lives of refugees around the world. The increasing participation and engagement of young refugees in decision-making processes is a positive step towards a better refugee response. Refugee leaders and refugee-led organizations (RLOs) around the…

Over the past year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed all of our lives in complex ways. Research shows that when a disaster hits, women and girls are some of the most vulnerable and highly affected, and this has proven true during the pandemic as well. Millions of women and girls have left…

Around the world, nearly 1 in 3 women are affected by gender-based violence (GBV) in their lifetime. While men, women, girls, and boys all experience GBV to varying degrees, women and girls are often disproportionately affected. GBV includes, but is not restricted to sexual, emotional, and psychological violence, early and forced marriage, domestic violence, female…

COVID-19 has become an unprecedented global crisis. The pandemic and its associated economic crisis have exposed deep structural inequalities around the world, with disproportionate effects on women and girls. This webinar, organized by Women’s Empowerment in Development (WED) Lab at McGill in partnership with the Institute for the Study of International Development, explores current issues around COVID-19…

The COVID-19 pandemic confirmed what we already knew – girls’ education is most at risk during emergency and crisis situations. Many girls, particularly those in refugee camps and their surrounding host communities, may never return to school. That’s why we quickly adapted our conditional cash transfers (CTs) approach and our radio programming in Kenya to keep girls’…

In response to COVID-19, the Government of Kenya, much like other governments around the world, initiated lockdowns of businesses and schools and implemented curfews to help curb transmission. Despite these measures, in just a few weeks, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Kenya almost doubled, bringing the total at the time of writing to…

Risk to Girls’ education and safety during COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about widespread lockdowns and school closures around the world, including in Kenya, where more than 2,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed.  In a country where 1.2 million primary-school-age children were already out of school before the crisis hit, these closures have…