Generation Guiders, a youth-led community-based organization in Western Kenya, has taken the lead in attending to the needs of rural adolescent girls by partnering with five other local organizations to develop an SMS platform for engaging girls and reaching them with contraceptive counselling and short-acting methods (pills and injectables). The girls that have subscribed to the Generation Guiders database and that of its partners engage in SMS conversations, after which the commodities are delivered to them.
“We received food donations from the Visa Oshwal Community in Nairobi and we did distribute it to the vulnerable girls in the rural setting.”
Erick Omondi, the founder of Generation Guiders and a 120 Under 40 Winner, notes that COVID-19 does not only impact girls’ reproductive health, but also their social and economic well-being. To address this, he partnered with a charitable organization, Visa Oshwal, under the initiative We Rise by Lifting Others to receive donations on behalf of his vulnerable community. He distributed the donations to community members to help them overcome the economic strains they are facing due to COVID-19.
Currently, Generation Guiders is collaborating with the local county (sub-national level) referral hospital to provide long-acting and reversible contraceptives. However, this has been challenging due to stock-outs and limited movement.
