Tareto Maa: changing FGM/C practices from within.

 How good it feels, after a period of absence,to write a blog post about something so important to me on International Day of Zero Tolerance to FGM, 6th February 2011. And how proud I feel to not only write about such a passionate subject of mine but to say I, and others with me, are  doing something concrete to help eradicate this practice.

A year ago, I was privileged to discover a truly grass-roots project, headed by one FGM survivor, a woman named Gladys Kiranto. This blog post is to highlight her work, my own journey in aiding her to fulfill a desire to build a refuge centre for girls fleeing FGM/C and to provide an education for these young people. Activist in this field know full well that we have many papers, documents, treaties and laws all aimed at preventing and erasing FGM/C  but that it still continues unabated because of the ingrained culture of citizens practicing this tradition. We in the west may be criticised for what is seen as evangelical zeal, to stop what we perceive to be this barbaric torture, by imposing our own standards of civilisation from the outside to within these communities. Yet, how do we really know and understand their problems of poverty and of acceptance, their culture and rites over our own desire for human rights.  This is why grass-roots projects such as Tareto Maa, supported by outside finance, will, drive, work and vision helps people from within the culture that embraces FGM to make the transition from the knife to an alternative rite of passage for a young female in Kenya, as one example.

So let me introduce to Tareto Maa and you can find as a start some information here.http://www.tareto-maa.org/

 What has been so successful to date about this project is that there has been a collective will of local people, who have set up this organisation, backed by the community’s church to make this project prosper and grow, yet in no way are they dismissing the Maasai culture of which they are proud. What has been so special for me is to be an accepted part of something which has started small, and now has grown to an extent that Tareto Maa is spilling out from its borders of the Transmara region, Kilgoris and beyond Kenya. People from America, Sweden and other parts of the world are beginning to see the power that is within Tareto Maa and are increasingly becoming part of the bigger picture. The catalyst for this, which has been the power house of lifting such a  grass-roots project to the tree tops has come from Germany, and more centrally Berlin. Supporters met with Gladys Kiranto  last August in Berlin and it was truly memorable as we talked about the future of Tareto.

 The focus of German assistance is from an organisation called betterplace and you can find this here http://www.betterplace.org/organisations/tareto-maa. Betterplace has been the centre of fund collection and project fund-raising and this last October we achieved the 5000 Euros needed to build our rescue shelter to house new girls fleeing FGM and early enforced marriage. There has also been a second big influence which has lit the touch-paper for spreading Tareto Maa globally. That being the micro-finance organisation Kiva.org and the Tareto Maa group set up by my husband. This has brought not only interest but donations too. You can find our Kiva group here.http://www.kiva.org/team/tareto_maa Finally we have a Facebook page here http://www.facebook.com/update_security_info.php?wizard=1#!/group.php?gid=136018319743141 and we communicate our news and fundraising events there. Our plan is to eventually have all these sites under one roof, via a website. and this is in an early stage of development.

Currently, our number of girls have far outstripped the resources we have. Initially 23 girls were housed by Gladys. This year, with our promotion and hard work, we now are looking after over 70 girls. For the Maasai tribe the ” circumcision” season starts in December but this year it arrived earlier and there was a race against time to get the shelter complete. Hindered by heavy rain which made roads impassable to get the raw materials where they needed to be, never-the-less, the shelter was up for the new year and the girls celebrated with a party.

So where do we go from here? Our next push is to create funding via individual child sponsorships so all the girls can go to school. This is a big step but so far we have secured 16 child sponsorships. Education is so important for the child’s future and for her to not only support herself but to help her family. This is where dear READER you can help. Please we need more people to sponsor a girl. The cost in English money is £21 a month or 70 pence per day  If you want to help in the battle against FGM and wish to do something in a direct way, this is what you can do. Also come and join us on any of our groups, or on betterplace as a supporter. Spread the word about us and leave any comments on this blog. All this is very much appreciated. Please leave a comment here if you would like more information re: the child sponsorships and I will contact you personally.

TOGETHER WE CAN HELP ERADICATE FGM. SUPPORT US TODAY AND START MAKING A DIFFERENCE ! THANK YOU.