Join The Akili Dada Community

We nurture a cadre of young women leaders at various decision-making levels and across sectors committed to participating in and building movements that provide spaces for young women to thrive. Curated as intensive workshops, we offer young women the opportunity to gain core transformative feminist leadership skills, feminist mentorship, and the opportunity to implement social action projects of their own choice.

We guide and facilitate the conceptualization and implementation of Social Action Projects by young women in keeping with our overarching goal of developing transformative feminist leadership. These Social Action Projects foster capacity building, awareness creation, social entrepreneurship, and the use of creative and performing arts implemented during the two-year project cycle.

We leverage our networks and technical expertise to identify external opportunities and assessments for organizational development that engage young women and women-led organizations to address their priority areas reflecting on their institutions’ strengths and identifying areas that require development.

Due to high risk of kidnapping concerns for the girls pictured- that was expressed to me by Akili Dada, the girls CANNOT be publicly identified by name, age or location.] Being part of Akili Dada means maintaining a certain grade point average. Akili Dada team members visit the scholars in their programs once a month or more to aid the girls if they need help or are falling behind, but the girls are all very ambitious and truly have become active members in their program and at their school. The scholars of Akili Dada in Kilifi, Kenya.

Ensuring that all girls and young women access education is a basic human right, a global development priority, and a strategic priority for Akili Dada. The Angaza scholarship is a multi-year comprehensive high school scholarship awarded to high-performing girls from Kenya’s rural and low-income communities. Our program additionally ensures that girls and young women have the space to dream and discover their innate potential — setting them up for personal and professional success.

We create a space through which girls and young women can explore and define their career goals while equipping them with skills to help vision and navigate career progression. We curate immersive experiential experiences such as outdoor learning experiences, career symposiums, exposing girls to their desired career context thus enabling them to make informed decisions about their futures.

To ensure their transition into institutions of higher learning, Angaza participants are also prepared to access education in higher learning institutions across Africa and beyond. Through intensive skills training, and active community engagement, high school graduates are prepared for the transition with increased efficacy and experience. This gives them a competitive edge to acquire post-high school scholarships and personal development opportunities across the world.

The Manyatta Homeschooling program targets girls and young women of school-going age but out-of-school between the ages of 15 and 25 years from Samburu County in Kenya. Girls and young women from this region continue to face gender barriers contributing to their poor educational attainment and general life outcomes rooted in extreme poverty, pervasive patriarchal socio-cultural practices, poor infrastructure, and a general lack of resources to support access to essential social services, putting them most at risk.

Through its quest to improve literacy levels in the ASAL regions, we aim to ensure out-of-school girls and young women access basic non-formal education that enhances their livelihood and increases literacy rates amongst the target group - out-of-school girls in Samburu County. The program aims to create this pathway by providing foundational numeracy and literacy skills that would allow for the transition to the formal education system, providing civic education focused on increasing girls’ knowledge, awareness, and understanding of girls and human rights with a sharp focus on the right to education and giving transferable skills training to equip them with basic entrepreneurial, reproductive, and mental health resources enabling them to make informed choices about their lives.

We convene girls for leadership and life skills intensives that have been carefully designed to empower girls to take advantage of opportunities as well as navigate and overcome challenges facing them today. We equip them with age-appropriate sexual and reproductive health rights information, girls’ rights education as well complementary, academic, and life skills. Adopting creative and innovative approaches, we encourage girls to identify and explore their leadership styles while creating opportunities that enable them to apply them to real-life situations.

We connect girls and young women to a powerful network of female mentors and role models who challenge and inspire girls to step out of their comfort zones and aspire to achieve their highest potential. We purposefully leverage African Feminist Mentorship practices, creating safe spaces and platforms for meaningful engagement that foster intergenerational cross-learning and sisterhood. Through mentorship, girls and young women access an added layer of supportive networks that equip girls with the skills to navigate high school, university, and beyond.

We know that the people in your life play a critical role in helping you achieve your personal and professional goals. As such we convene and build the capacity of gatekeepers — educators, mentors, community leaders, and parents — in creating a supportive network for girls. We organize these convenings as both learning and advocacy spaces where cross-cutting and emerging issues affecting girls are addressed.
Washa Program
Igniting Young Women's Inherent Power
Washa: Swahili word for ignite

Washa leverages the collective power of young women aged 18-35 to innovate solutions to pressing issues facing them, their communities, and their immediate spheres of influence. The program invests in young women leaders at different levels in their personal and professional journeys by building their foundations and setting them up for growth and more substantive social and economic impact. The program increases the capacity of individual young women by building conceptual clarity, strategic visioning, and movement-building from a transformative feminist perspective.

How We Do It

1. Emerging Leaders Institutes

We nurture a cadre of young women leaders at various decision-making levels and across sectors committed to participating in and building movements that provide spaces for young women to thrive. Curated as intensive workshops, we offer young women the opportunity to gain core transformative feminist leadership skills, feminist mentorship, and the opportunity to implement social action projects of their own choice.

2. Social Action Projects

We guide and facilitate the conceptualization and implementation of Social Action Projects by young women in keeping with our overarching goal of developing transformative feminist leadership. These Social Action Projects foster capacity building, awareness creation, social entrepreneurship, and the use of creative and performing arts implemented during the two-year project cycle.

3. Organizational Development

We leverage our networks and technical expertise to identify external opportunities and assessments for organizational development that engage young women and women-led organizations to address their priority areas reflecting on their institutions’ strengths and identifying areas that require development.

Our Impact

730

emerging leaders incubated on Transformative Feminist Leadership

110

seed grants disbursed to advance Social Action Projects

$96,470

worth of seed grants disbursed to 110 young women-led Social Action Projects

Over 30 young women directly impacted through the movement

Wasichana Wa Afrika, December 2024

Our programs are anchored in feminist movement building and advocacy. We purposefully create safe spaces and platforms for girls and young women, facilitating intergenerational learning, sisterhood, mentorship, and agency. By doing so, we continue to catalyzing and sustaining the feminist movement in Africa and beyond.

Angaza Program
Amplifying girls' voices