Add a Room
This project aims at adding extra room for girls in pastoralist communities and protects girls from predators.
Add a Room
This project aims at adding extra room for girls in pastoralist communities and protects girls from predators.
This project focuses on adding extra rooms for girls in pastoralist communities. Traditionally, the Maasai believe that once a girl is 7 to 10 years old, she shouldn’t sleep in the same house as her parents. Instead, she is often made to sleep outside on a mat or cowhide, where many face sexual abuse and repeated rape.
Healthwise Foundation educates mothers to build safe rooms for their daughters. Once built, we donate a package that includes a mattress, solar lamp, blanket, food items, and sanitary pads, ensuring girls have a safe, dignified space to sleep and study.
It has been a tread and a concern as many girls from the Pastoralists’ community have,
In my quest to unearth this mystery, I realized several key factors,
- High school dropout rates
- High teenage pregnancies
- Forced marriages
- Early marriages
- Female Genital Mutilations (FGM)
- It’s Maasai women and girls who build the houses.
- In Maasai culture, women are seen as valuable or “wealthy” when they are married off.
- Between ages 7 to 10, children stop sleeping in their parents’ room.
- There is no separate room for children to sleep once they reach age 7.
- Girls who undergo FGM typically bring in a higher dowry.
Add a Room Initiative
One of the biggest cultural challenges in pastoralist communities is the lack of a safe room for girls to sleep. That’s why I launched the Add a Room Initiative—to raise awareness and encourage families to add a dedicated space for girls when building their Manyatta homes.
For just $120, you can help provide a safe room that protects 1–3 girls from predators, gives them privacy to manage their hygiene with dignity, and offers them the security every child deserves.
Blessing's Testimony
Blessing, was just 13 and five months pregnant when I first heard about her. I knew I had to visit her and understand her situation.
During our conversation, I learned the heartbreaking truth: Blessing had been repeatedly raped while sleeping outside. She didn’t even know who the father of her baby was because different men would simply appear in the night and assault her as she slept.
But Blessing faced an even more terrifying challenge. Her community believed she had to undergo Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) before giving birth. The superstition was that if she delivered without being “cut,” her father would either die or go blind.
With no hospital nearby, Blessing’s only option was to rely on local midwives, who refused to help her unless she underwent the procedure. Then, Blessing’s mother heard about the “Add A Room” project. In a desperate three weeks, she built a room for her family. When asked why she worked so quickly, her answer was simple and profound: “I don’t want any of my girls to go through what I did, and what Blessing is going through.”
Blessing and her family became the very first beneficiaries of the “Add A Room” initiative, a testament to a mother’s fierce love and a community’s struggle for a safer future.
Support HWF, $120 save girls from predators
Donate to the Add a Room Project and provide a safe place for girls to sleep, study, and change menstrual pads with privacy and confidence.