Lead image for Three women turn personal struggles into a mentorship movement for Kenyan girls.
Esther Gitaranga once queued the whole day at the University of Nairobi trying to clear her tuition fees. She was sent away in the evening with Sh500 in her pocket, not enough for a night in Nairobi, and not enough to get home either. A friend took her in that night, a woman who did not know anything about her but rescued her anyway. From that moment, helping young women stopped being an assignment and became personal.
Today, Esther is one of three women behind Binti Rising, a Nairobi-based mentorship initiative reaching hundreds of girls and young people every month. Her co-founders, Sofia Sentepian Lentikaa and Brandy Venessa, came to the same mission from different starting points, but all three now run a programme that has become their life work.
A new path
Esther, 27, grew up in a small village called Mawanga in Nakuru County. She arrived at the University of Nairobi with big dreams but little knowledge of the world she was stepping into. By second year, she was already the main campus representative of the Women Students’ Welfare Association (Woswa). She rose to become secretary general, then president. “It was a messy and chaotic time,” she says.
The higher she climbed in campus politics, the more she saw its ugly side. “Leaders won not because of good policies but because of noise, drama and rhetoric,” she says.
By her final year, she had made up her mind to build something new, away from politics. Sofia’s journey started differently but ended in the same place. The 25-year-old from the Ilchamus community grew up as the only child of her mother.
Sofia joined the University of Nairobi to study pure mathematics and was chosen as class representative, which drew her into student politics under the University of Nairobi Students Association. She won a secretary's post during the Covid-19 period, then later contested the treasurer seat but lost. “It really hurt because we used a lot of money,” she says.