Zamara Foundation
Founded in 2016, Zamara Foundation is a women-led organization in Kenya whose work is rooted in African feminist principles. Their approach is multi-pronged and intersectional, addressing the drivers of child marriage through rights education, political consciousness raising, sexual and reproductive justice, and advocating for policy change.
Through feminist political consciousness raising, Zamara Foundation will continue to support adolescent girls to access their agency, voice, and bodily autonomy. The organization will use its Changemakers grant to stabilize its basic operations, pay staff salaries and administrative overheads.
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FROM ZAMARA FOUNDATION
Receiving the news that our organization has been selected for a Changemakers grant has been the the most uplifting and affirming moment of our year. It feels less like an award and more like a recognition, a quiet but wonderful reminder that footprints of our feminist work are visible, tracing their way across communities and across the digital world in ways we never imagined. In a society that often ignores the lived realities and experiences of adolescent girls and dismisses the labour of grassroots feminist organizing, this grant arrives as a confirmation: the work is landing, the work is necessary, the work is shifting something.
This partnership with Girls First Fund opens a powerful door for our organization. With this support, we can more deeply weave the everyday experiences of girls navigating menstruation, sex education, safety, leadership, and the structural inequalities that shape their lives into our in-school programs and community work. The Changemakers grant will continue to strengthen our ability to respond rapidly and intentionally to the evolving needs of the girls we serve.
For our team, we are excited about getting purposeful wellness support which is a recognition that feminist care is necessary for feminist work. This investment not only sustains the emotional and physical well-being of our staff, but also expands our capacity to protect girls at risk of early and forced marriages, to intervene when their rights are threatened, and to stand beside them as they claim safer, freer futures. It confirms what we know as feminists: our movements become stronger, our interventions become more profound, and hope becomes a tangible, living force in the lives of every girl we reach when we support those who keep communities together.
Our dream for our community and for the girls we serve is beautifully simple and deeply radical: that every girl can live an ordinary, uninterrupted girlhood. More than anything, we want every girl to feel, deep in her bones and from the bottom of her heart, that she belongs wherever her dreams carry her. That she has a voice, a choice, and is deserving of a life where she can thrive unapologetically in her own time, in her own body, and on her own terms.