Twenty years ago, the V-Day Safe House for the Gilrs opened in the Southern Rift Valley in Narok, Kenya. Founded and led by Agnes Pareyio and the Tasaru Ntomonok Initiative, the safe house provides shelter and education for girls running away from female genital mutilation (FGM) and early childhood marriage.
It is a place where young women can safely celebrate an alternative “rite of passage” so that Masai women can follow their tradition without undergoing the cut. Agnes and her team bravely confront the cultural practice of FGM in the Maasai community have won many hard-earned victories, influencing community members to take on alternative rituals to preserve their culture, and educating women and men alike about the power of an educated girl.
Agnes began her efforts to end FGM by walking from village to village in the Rift valley in 2000, educating families about the dangers of the practice.
She met V (formerly Eve Ensler) in 1999. V, in an interview with Mother Jones in 2004, recalled their early connection, “She had been genitally mutilated as a child, and had made a decision to stop it. She had devoted her life for years to walking from village to village on foot, educating boys and girls and mothers and fathers about the dangers of FGM [female genital mutilation]. In those years, she stopped 1,500 girls from being cut. When we met her, we said, “What can we do for you?” She said, “Well, I could use a Jeep.” We got her a Jeep. Forty-five hundred girls. Then we got her money, and she opened the first safe house in Africa.”
