Maasai Voices: Climate Action and Women’s Empowerment in Kenya

Two Maasai Youth Activists, Winnie Seuta Kisioki and Samuel Lekato, share on EcoJustice Radio about the new dawn in Maasailand: the actions undertaken in conservation and female empowerment to ensure the cultural heritage of the Maasai thrives on.

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Empowering Maasai Futures: Youth Activism and Cultural Resilience

The Maasai are Indigenous people from southern Kenya, renowned and revered for their pastoral, nomadic heritage. They inhabit and range across the African Great Lakes region, and have traditionally subsisted almost entirely on the meat, blood and milk of their cattle herds. While many may romanticize the traditional ways of the Maasai, their Earth-based wisdom and connection to the land, Maasai lifeways are now under threat of climate change, overpopulation, and global warming.

On this show we talk with two Maasai youth activists working to make life better, Winnie Seuta Kisioki, founder of My Maasai Woman Community Based Organization that provides education to women, and Samuel Lekato, Founder and Chairman of Enduata Emaa Community Based Organization.

In recent years, the Maasai have suffered the consequences of desertification, deforestation, drought and famine, forcing them to seek new ways to sustain themselves amidst crises of poverty, public health and malnutrition. Additionally, there are pressing societal issues in need of redress, particularly with regard to women’s rights and empowerment. Female genital mutilation has long been a traditional initiation practice that has caused physical injury and death, as well as cut short the dreams and aspirations of women in general.

Listen to Winnie Seuta Kisioki and Samuel Lekato share about the new dawn in Maasailand: the actions Maasai are undertaking in the realms of conservation, preservation, restoration, and female empowerment to ensure that the rich cultural heritage and legacy of the Maasai thrives on.

STORY: Welcome to Loliondo: Maasai Struggle Against Game Hunters for Land Rights

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Winnie Seuta Kisioki is a young Maasai activist based in Kenya. She studied at Zetech University Community Development and Thika School of Medicine and Health Sciences, where she completed her courses in Community Health. As an activist she advocates for women’s rights by creating the community-based organization ‘My Maasai Woman‘. She helps women and girls to know their rights and have courage to stand for themselves. Her particular focus is trying to stop Female Gential Mutilation, early marriages, teen pregnancies, and sexual and gender-based violence that tend to pull their girls’ dreams down.

Samuel Lekato is currently the Project Coordinator of Green Planet Ambassadors at Enduata Emaa Community-Based Organization in Kenya. Enduata means vision in the Maasai language, and Emaa means the Maasai community. He is a member of YOUNGO, a youth action and climate change club. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and is a passionate Climate Activist. He is a young changemaker in Maasailand who is driving transforming the community to a sustainable future.

Carry Kim, Co-Host of EcoJustice Radio. An advocate for ecosystem restoration, Indigenous lifeways, and a new humanity born of connection and compassion, she is a long-time volunteer for SoCal350, member of Ecosystem Restoration Camps, and a co-founder of the Soil Sponge Collective, a grassroots community organization dedicated to big and small scale regeneration of Mother Earth.

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Executive Producer and Intro: Jack Eidt
Hosted by Carry Kim
Engineer and Original Music: Blake Quake Beats

Episode 202

Updated 30 December 2023