Mercyline, Kenya

International Women's Day

This International Women's Day, celebrate women

Across the world, incredible women are leading change in their communities. Women like Mercyline from Kenya (pictured above) are mentoring and supporting young girls to stay in school and get the education they deserve — and campaigning in their communities to end child marriage and gender-based violence.

This International Women's Day, 8th March, you could help support this life-changing work. If you donate to ActionAid your gift could equip women and girls with the tools they need to fight poverty and inequality, so they can build a better world for their entire communities.

Your donation could support Florence's work

Florence, 30, is a mentor and role model for girls in her community in Kenya. She works with an ActionAid-funded Girls' Forum — a place that's close to her heart, because she attended it herself as a child. 

Now, Florence is proud to work with the young girls, helping them to become empowered and to stay in school. 

"Nothing is impossible," she teaches the girls. "When you work hard, you will pass.

"It is important for girls to have role models because as they continue to grow, there is peer pressure. It is very easy to divert and follow what the others are doing.

[Girls] need to know that it is their right to get an education and see the importance of it and where it can take them."

Your donation could help fund Girls’ Forums, like the one Florence mentors at, so that more girls can access education and build the future they want.

Donate now

Florence is a mentor and role model for girls in her community.

Esther Sweeney/ActionAid

Around the world, 130 million girls are out of school. Your donation could support girls to get the education that is their right, so they can create the future they want.

Lizzie, from ActionAid Kenya, works to ensure every girl gets the education that is their right.

Esther Sweeney/ActionAid

Supporting women's empowerment

"At ActionAid, we are not apologetic about working with women," says Lizzie, who works with ActionAid Kenya to end gender-based violence and promote girls' education in her community.

Lizzie knows the importance of helping women and girls to become empowered and claim their rights.

"Once women have the skills and the knowledge they will be economically empowered," she says. "And therefore cases of violence against women and girls will be reduced.

"We empower our girls so that they can have that self-esteem and that confidence to say no to marriage, no to early pregnancy.”

Lizzie says she has lots of success stories of women who she previously helped as children, who are now grown up and doing well in life.

These success stories you get day-by-day give you that energy, that relationship with these women; working with them and seeing that they have a good life at the end of the day."

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Mercyline is a mentor working with girls from disadvantaged backgrounds in Kenya. Esther Sweeney/ActionAid

Page updated 4 September 2024