Kipeto Energy

Celebrating our women and choosing to challenge.

Figure 1 - Kipeto staff choosing to challenge

Around the world, 8 March is marked as International Women’s Day (IWD). It is a time to recognize female trailblazers, to campaign for change, to connect with women’s history and commit to take action against gender inequalityIn celebration and recognition of our own women’s achievements, we whole heartedly supported IWD and the Kipeto team took time to acknowledge and consider the IWD 2021 campaign theme “a challenged world is an alert world”.

We started our women’s day by having an informative morning session with the BioTherm “Wellbeing and Inclusion Committee” where the topic was introduced and where we got a chance to consider the hard work needed for Kipeto as a company to constantly choose to challenge gender-inequality, call out bias, question stereotypes and help forge an inclusive world.

A team from Kipeto then proceeded to visit schools from the local community to  raise awareness and mentor young girls on the topic of a more inclusive future. The specific schools visited were Oloyangalani Girls High School, Oloyangalani Primary School, Enarau Primary School and Esilanke Primary School.

The objective of Kipeto’s visits was also meant to inspire and encourage the young girls via stories from our own female heroes, especially considering that Class 8 and Form 4 pupils are in final preparation for national exams.  We asked Eng. Carolyne Tanui, Dr Mary Warui and Sharon Osoro to share their career and life stories of successes and challenges and to explain what they are most proud of achieving to date.

In all the stories and experiences shared, two main topics were emphasized to the girls:

  • that there are no ‘male’ jobs or ‘female’ jobs and your ambitions, discipline and determination are what will place you in the society; and
  • that you can do and succeed in absolutely anything you put your head to and focus on

#nohumanislimited.

We also shared success-cards with the schools with a message of good wishes from our Kipeto family to the pupils in their forthcoming exams, we certainly hope to hear great success stories when their results are out.

In the spirit of continuing with the Menstrual Health and Covid Management Campaigns which we started in 2020, we shared handwashing soaps with all the schools we visited and sanitary towels with the girls and had a talk about menstrual health and hygiene. We reiterated our message that there is no shame in menstruation and all women go through the same experience once they attain the reproductive age. We#ChooseToChallengeMenstrual stigmatization

Finally, after a day well spent with our young girls in school, we had a chance to sit down with our Kipeto ladies to celebrate our achievements so far and continued to encourage each other’s dreams and aspirations in life. As diverse individuals and in our roles at Kipeto, We #ChooseToChallenge#IWD2021!!!