{"id":220051,"date":"2024-10-14T13:00:36","date_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/\/?p=220051"},"modified":"2024-10-14T13:04:39","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:04:39","slug":"gladness-empowers-young-girls-claim-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/\/gladness-empowers-young-girls-claim-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Gladness empowers young girls to claim their rights."},"content":{"rendered":"

As a child, Gladness dreamed of being a hairdresser. When she wasn\u2019t in school, she often hung around the salons in her neighborhood, observing the shop owners. Sometimes, they\u2019d even let her help with small, easy chores, which always seemed big and important to Gladness.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gladness\u2019s mother worked in the fields with other women in the community\u2014one of the few jobs available to an uneducated Maasai woman in rural Tanzania. Gladness\u2019s father had long struggled with alcoholism and wasn\u2019t around.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Life turned upside down when Gladness\u2019s mother passed away unexpectedly. Gladness hadn\u2019t even known she was sick, and then, all at once, she was gone. Gladness, who was a teenager at the time, dropped out of school to care for her three younger siblings. The family didn\u2019t have relatives nearby.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gladness assumed the only job available was farming, so she took all she was offered. She couldn\u2019t earn enough to pay for food and keep her siblings in school, so they dropped out, too.<\/span><\/p>\n

The family\u2019s house, which had been in a fragile state before their mother\u2019s death, slowly became decrepit. No floor, no windows, no roof. Gladness and her siblings patched up holes with cardboard, plastic tarps, and sheets of paper.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Gladness had a friend in town, who had joined Zoe Empowers a year prior. As Gladness battled to survive the challenges of extreme poverty, she saw Salome<\/a>, who was also caring for her siblings, grow a successful salon business. Salome<\/a> gave Gladness hope and inspired her to do the same.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, in October of 2021, when Zoe launched more empowerment groups in the community, Gladness went to the recruitment meeting. She was accepted and got her first start-up kit three months later. Gladness partnered with another group member to open a salon. The two young women split rent in a high-traffic area to build up their clientele. Before long, they could each afford to move to their own space.<\/span><\/p>\n

With her income, Gladness re-enrolled herself and her siblings in school and restored her home to a safe, habitable condition with a new roof, door and windows. She also purchased goats and chickens to rear and sell at the market.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Gladness is especially proud to own livestock in addition to running her salon because after she dropped out of school and before joining Zoe, she believed farming was her only future. Now, it\u2019s merely a source of supplemental income.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Furthermore, as a member of the Masaai tribe, she always believed she\u2019d have to be married as a young girl and have children. Since becoming an empowered businesswoman, Gladness now understands that she can choose her own husband.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Salome<\/a>, Gladness has become a mentor to other girls in other local Zoe groups. When her trainees ask for advice, Gladness encourages them to believe in themselves.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI tell them their potential is limitless,\u201d Gladness said. \u201cGirls especially don\u2019t have to get married at a young age,\u201d she added. \u201cI tell them to stand in their position. They can do anything and succeed in it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gladness\u2019s message is important and illustrates a distinct aspect of the empowerment program: the robust Zoe network.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Current Zoe participants always have access to upper-level participants and program graduates. Newcomers get to see their struggles and challenges reflected back to them from other youth who have already overcome them, instilling hope and faith early on in their empowerment journey.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So far, Gladness has trained five young women to become hairdressers. Looking ahead, she would like to continue mentoring while expanding her salon business to include cosmetics. She will graduate from the program at the end of 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a child, Gladness dreamed of being a hairdresser. When she wasn\u2019t in school, she often hung around the salons in her neighborhood, observing the shop owners. Sometimes, they\u2019d even let her help with small, easy chores, which always seemed big and important to Gladness.\u00a0 Gladness\u2019s mother worked in the fields with other women in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":220054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40,43],"tags":[71,823,23],"country":[2004],"yst_prominent_words":[1099,1482,147,940,405,143,1485,1483,162,257,2012,126],"class_list":["post-220051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zoe-children","category-zoe-impact","tag-child-rights","tag-community-connections","tag-housing","country-tanzania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220051"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":220070,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220051\/revisions\/220070"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220051"},{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=220051"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=220051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}