More than 100,000 Somali women live as refugees in remote camps in arid northeastern Kenya, as a result of 15 years of devastating civil war in Somalia. Most of them have had little or no education and have no voice in society. In the camps, as in Somalia, they face early and forced marriages, high levels of gender violence and female genital cutting.

Access to information for these women, some of whom have lived in the camps for more than a decade, is severely constrained. Although radio is the main source of information in the region, extreme poverty means only one in 500 refugees owns a radio and nearly all of those are men. In the male-dominated society, women’s access to the few radios that exist is severely limited. Women report beatings from their husbands for touching the ‘family’ radio.

With funding from the US-based Starfish Group, thousands of Somali women are gaining access to much needed information through Lifeline radios. They are forming women’s groups to listen and discuss topics that affect their lives and to begin to advocate for positive change. To date, more than 250 women’s groups have been trained on group listening and have received Lifeline radios, conservatively benefiting more than 3,600 refugee women.

The Lifeline Energy teamed up with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), CARE, Save the Children, the National Council of Churches of Kenya, Handicap International, the African Women and Children’s Feature Service, the Pastoralists Journalist Network and STAR-FM to operate the activity, called the Somali Women’s Learning Project. UNHCR reports that since the introduction of the radios “there is more access to information and there is better interaction amongst the women refugees”.

Three women leaders of the ‘Ex-Circumcizer’s Group’ during radio listening group training.

The first year of the project benefits Somali women living in the camps, while the next two years will target Kenyan Somali women who face very similar challenges, with even less support than those living inside the camps.

The project benefits not only the Somali women, but also the broadcasters who are trying to reach them. Most of the trainers from the Pastoralists Journalist Network are Somali-speaking radio broadcasters, who not only teach the women but also learn from them about the critical issues that they would like to hear discussed on the radio.

Evidence from decades of radio-for-development projects shows that listening groups are an effective method in transferring information and education to mass audiences. Sustained radio access places hitherto disenfranchised people on the first rung of a ladder to self-empowerment, as they broaden their listening to all types of news, current affairs, and advice programmes.