The Women’s Empowerment Development Agency was formed in 2009 by a group of Kenyans and a couple Westerners. Based in Mlolongo, Kenya, about half an hour outside Nairobi, WEDA’s goal is to provide life-altering support to disadvantaged women in general and local sex workers specifically.
Located on the main road from Mombasa (east Africa’s main seaport), Mlolongo features a weigh station where all trucks carrying freight from the coast to Nairobi and other major African destinations must stop and be weighed. The truckers attract sex workers; the sex workers attract men from Nairobi; the men from Nairobi attract more sex workers…and so Mlolongo has become a hub of (somewhat lower-end) prostitution in Kenya. To date there is no support framework of any kind in place for the Mlolongo sex workers or their clientele.
WEDA’s mission is not to get women out of prostitution. As in most parts of the world, Kenya’s commercial sex business is largely economically driven, and we can’t speak to the methods a woman uses to feed herself or her children, nor do we subscribe to the point of view that sex workers need to be “rehabilitated.” Life is very difficult in Kenya and women’s rights and job opportunities are limited, so our goal is to support sex workers with the programs THEY feel will improve their quality of life, empowering them to pursue the futures they desire. Our over-arching efforts are toward a day when no woman or child has to use her body as a commodity in order to survive. Today, we support disadvantaged and disenfranchised women right where they are.
Currently, priority number one is to rent a small facility in Mlolongo to serve as a women’s center. Here we will offer support meetings, vocational training, rape and violence counseling, life coaching, and continuing education, as well as facilitating whatever income-generating projects the women wish to spearhead. The community response to this plan has so far been overwhelmingly positive, and we’re excited to see what will happen once the center is in place. In the meantime, while we fund-raise toward renting a space, we continue to foster friendships with the sex workers in order to give them a voice and learn what they want. When the time comes, we hope the women’s center will simply be a venue for them to initiate the ideas for life-improvement that they already have.
WEDA is also working in partnership with another NGO, based in Nairobi, which supports disadvantaged men and the high-risk HIV population. Through this alliance we will support the truckers and other clientele in Mlolongo as well as with the sex workers, targeting both sides of the equation.
