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The SKY Girls Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering teenage girls in Kenya, hosted the biggest exclusive event for teen girls in Nairobi on Saturday, March 18th. The event, which was held at the Moi International Sports Centre, attracted over 6,000 girls from various parts of Nairobi and its environs.
The event festival, which was themed “Najijua and I’m smoke-free’,” provided a platform for teenage girls to come together and learn from each other, as well as from accomplished women in the entertainment scene in Kenya. The festival featured aspirational artists who shared empowerment messages through their performances and encouraged girls to make positive life choices and say ZII to negative peer pressure.”
The girls got to interact with Amina Rabar who was one of the MCs of the day and enjoyed fun activities and entertainment from a few Kenyan artists and their favorite TikTok Dance Influencers.
Speaking about the event, Svetlana Polikarpova, SKY Girls Kenya Program director highlights, “The purpose of the event was to empower the girls to be confident in who they are and make positive choices based on what they love doing most. This was beautifully brought out through the day’s theme, ‘Najijua and I’m smoke-free’”.
The event was sponsored by several organizations, including the Highlands who gladly provided juices and Tripple Kay Mobile Caterers provided meals to cater for 6000 girls throughout the event.
SKY Girls Kenya began its journey in September 2020 with a mandate to connect, educate and inform teenage girls between the ages of 13-18 years within greater Nairobi.
SKY gives teenage girls a supportive community of peers to help them follow their passions and say no to the things they know they’re good without.
ABOUT SKY GIRLS AFRICA;
SKY GIRLS is a hugely successful and well-supported social movement in Kenya, Ghana, Botswana, Zambia, and Ivory Coast. We work to inspire young girls to stay true to their values, and what they care about, helping them resist peer pressure to smoke tobacco. Through content based on the topics they love, and by creating a “community” for them to be a part of, SKY aims to increase girls’ confidence, self-reflection, decision-making, and refusal skills so that they can make positive choices that are true to themselves – including the choice not to smoke. SKY has been funded by the Gates Foundation since 2013.
Phone surveys in October 2021 indicated that two-thirds (66.3%) of girls aged 12-19 in Nairobi had heard of SKY Girls. SKY Girls TV show “The SISTA Show” aired on Switch TV and NTV,achieving over 15 million views. The SKY Girls magazine has a circulation of 40,000 copies every quarter reaching a total of 165,000 issues, and SKY social media channels have a combined following of over 45,000 people.
