Our Mission is to adopt young and at-risk Maasai girls, educate them, and teach them life sustaining skills for the betterment of their village.
Our work offers Maasai girls and the Maasai village a path to break a debilitating cycle of child-mortality, extreme poverty, FGM, and abuses of child-marriage. Your support creates opportunity for us to provide a safe and nurturing environment for these girls to receive education, medical care, and the life skills that radically alter the course of their lives and the future culture of their tribe.
Our vision is to provide:
(1) a safe haven for girls who are being forced into early marriage or are running away from forced FGM;
(2) to teach Maasai girls to dream about their future and develop a vision that includes a productive and full life
(3) mentoring in assertiveness, life skills, and study habits;
(4) family counselling to get parents on board with their girls’ education;
(5) a study hall that includes tutoring and study resources;
(6) after school classes for girls who are behind in their education, due to the lack of schooling prior to being rescued;
(7) business and technical training so girls can become self-sustaining, even if they don’t excel in academics.
(8) the girls stay at MGRC until they achieve these goals.
The Rescue Process
Girls seeking refuge come to us from great distances. We have been a part of the community since 2013. The locals know us and know our center as a safe place that offers an alternative choice to oppressive cultural norms.
Prioritizing girls is one of the most difficult parts of the rescue process, since the need far exceeds our available resources. Through close connections with the community, we are able to determine the most critical cases where the girls’ health, safety, or well being is threatened. After making this determination, we are able to offer these girls a permanent spot in the center.
The full cost tosponsor a girl is $1,560 USD a year. Due to the urgency of many situations, we often provide safe shelter to these girls before we have a sponsor lined up for them. We make due in whatever way we can until we find sponsors, so that we can make a long term commitment to their safety.
The girls receive a medical checkup when they arrive at the center, and we continue to provide full medical care throughout their stay. All girls living at the center are given food, shelter, a safe place to live, and must attend school.
Education & Training
Maasai women are especially disadvantaged in Tanzania. For financial and cultural reasons, they have little access to secondary education. As a result, they are often bartered for a dowry of cattle in an arranged marriage as young as age 8.
When Maasai girls are able to attend secondary and post-secondary schools, they become agents of change for their family and community.
Education is a cornerstone of our work at the rescue center. Our mission is to adopt the most at-risk girls – victims of abuse, poverty and starvation – and give them a foundation for a new life.
We believe that education is a way to break this cycle of abuse and poverty. It means becoming independent with either vocational training or a chance to go onto a higher education.
The full cost to educate a girl, including school fees, supplies and textbooks, school uniforms and shoes, is $130 USD per school year.
Sustainable Development
Sustainability
We are committed to a sustainable future and to improving the social, economic and environmental well being of our community.
We are developing a sustainable model that will see long term change in the lives of the most vulnerable Maasai girls and see them raise up to become the leaders of tomorrow.
We have outgrown our current rental facility and are planning to purchase land of our own, to build our facilities that better aligns with our mission and vision, and allows for expansion of our sustainability projects.
We sought assistance from Architects Without Frontiers to help guide us through the relocation and development process for our eco-village vision.