During routine landscape surveys on July 2023, one of PlantVillage's field officers met a 7-year-old girl named Sabina who was not in school.
When he asked her family why she wasn’t in school, they said that because she is their only girl and they are living in poverty, they need to marry her to a man 4× her age for the dowry payment.
We then intervened and provided her with the opportunity to attend school instead, where she is currently thriving.
A couple of weeks later, a different field officer in Turkana met another little girl named Loyce who was in the same situation as Sabina, and we paid to get her in school as well.
Because we could not pay for their school with regular PlantVillage funds, we had to rely on the generosity of our staff who contributed their own funds to support Sabina and Loyce's education.
We then created The Village Youth Fund to provide us with the necessary business infrastructure to extend educational opportunities to more girls in similar situations.
All the money goes to getting girls out of danger and into schools.
We knew that simply paying school fees was not enough to keep girls in school and away from child marriage. Our vision is thus to create a sustainable framework wherein PlantVillage's broader resilience building initiatives are anchored around the school, enabling us to not only improve the quality of education but also to capitalize on the profitability of these initiatives.
The income from this will be allocated towards enhancing the learning environment in PlantVillage accredited schools, as well as establishing high-yield savings accounts for VYF-sponsored children to be able to access upon their graduation, ensuring a brighter future for each one of them. In this manner, we are not only creating a strong financial motivation for school attendance but also equipping children with versatile skills in fields such as business, science, AI, engineering, and more.
PlantVillage founder and Village youth fund co-founder
Village Youth Fund co-founder and CEO
Kenya Team
Co-Lead
Kenya Team
Co-Lead
Child protection officer for Isiolo
Child protection officer for Isiolo
Child protection officer for Turkana
Child protection officer for Turkana
Child protection officer for Turkana
PlantVillage is a research group comprised of over 250 people, ~95% being African youth. It was founded by David Hughes in 2012 at Penn State University.
PlantVillage is a United Nations and USAID backed initiative that uses smartphones and AI to help African farmers adapt to climate change and increase food security.
In 2021, PlantVillage was named a USAID Innovation lab as part of the US Government's commitment to end malnutrition globally.
According to UN estimates, PlantVillage’s technology has protected the food security of 36.6 million people by preventing roughly $1.56 billion worth of food loss.
As part of the carbon capture initiative, PlantVillage has planted over 1.6 million trees in Africa and is working with communities to create biochar, which both pulls carbon out of the atmosphere and serves as an alternative source of income for smallholder farmers.
We surveyed community members in the Kenyan counties of Samburu, Turkana, Isiolo, Marsabit, Baringo, and Narok. These were 43% Male and 57% female with more younger people than older people sampled.
reported that child marriage is harmful but often necessary / unavoidable
Socially acceptable marriage age for 14% of the respondents
It is not uncommon for young girls to die by suicide after being married to an older man.
The most common reasons reported
for believing that child marriage is beneficial
All the money goes to getting girls out of danger and into schools.
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