Citizen-led Accountability
Adolescents & Youth
Self-Care
Respectful Maternity Care
Midwives & Midwifery
History & Mission
WRA Kenya was founded in 2009 to ensure that all Kenyan women realize their rights to a safe pregnancy and childbirth. We help citizens recognize their rights and hold the government accountable for commitments made to maternal and child health.
Challenge
In Kenya, 8,000 women and 40,000 newborns die before, during or after pregnancy every year. Combined with an overall teen pregnancy rate of 18% – with some regions of the country reporting as high as 40% — Kenya is in a reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health crisis.
Solution
By building the capacity of citizens, including adolescents and youth, to understand their health rights, then facilitating meaningful engagement with the government, we can ensure that the most important challenges and solutions are identified and that quality reproductive, maternal newborn and adolescent health services and policies are in place.
Current Campaigns
WRA Kenya is currently involved in several campaigns to raise awareness and drive action for reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health (RMNCAH).
The Our Voices Project is working to ensure that adolescents, young women and girls can effectively engage with duty bearers around reproductive, maternal and adolescent health issues. By collecting and amplifying young people’s voices through youth accountability teams, we have increased engagement between adolescents and county government and RMNCAH service providers to address their needs.
The Whatever Your Political Colors campaign made a clarion call to politicians seeking various elective posts to prioritize mothers, newborns and adolescents in their agenda and be ready to be held accountable once elected. Citizens were also encouraged to scrutinize those running and only vote for leaders who committed to prioritize mothers, newborns and adolescents’ health. For more information, here are some interviews.
Warembo na SDGs at the Global Goals World Cup. WRA Kenya was part of the Global Goals Women’s World Cup in Nairobi, with the campaign targeted on Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) – good health for all. Various educative forums for adolescents and youth, with a focus on sexual health and rights, were undertaken through women-only football clubs. Preparatory forums presented a unique opportunity to unify youth to hold their local leaders to account on promises made and policies in place for RMNCAH. These also served as a platform to discuss the SDGs more broadly and other key commitments that Kenya has made around RMNCAH.
Our Impact
- Secured maternal and newborn health as part of the media agenda in the country.
- Partnered with key youth networks, building their capacity to engage around their key reproductive health concerns.
- Trained a network of senior and vibrant media staff that resulted in significantly improved reporting and a pool of WRA experts who are called upon anytime to talk about RMNCAH rights and entitlements for citizens.
- Conducted a political economy analysis on citizen rights and entitlements awareness, which revealed key issues and recommendations for improved RMNCAH.
- Undertook a sensitization convoy from Nairobi to Kisumu educating citizens on their rights and how their actions can help ensure that no woman dies while giving life.
- Engaged and trained a pool of champions who have played key roles in supporting the WRA Kenya agenda.
Gallery
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: Team Warembo na SDGs, which is ‘Beauties and SDGs’ in Swahili. Members from WRA Kenya played for Global Goal 3 at the Global Goals World Cup in Nairobi as part of a larger effort to call for higher investment in addressing maternal, newborn and adolescent health in Kenya. Photo Credit: WRA Kenya/Angel Katusia.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: Team Warembo na SDGs, meaning Beauties and SDGs in Swahili, representing White Ribbon Alliance Kenya and Maternal Health at the Global Goals World Cup in Nairobi. Photo Credit: WRA Kenya/ Angel Katusia.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: Team Warembo na SDGs, meaning Beauties and SDGs in Swahili, representing White Ribbon Alliance Kenya and Maternal Health at the Global Goals World Cup in Nairobi. Photo Credit: WRA Kenya/ Angel Katusia.
NO WOMAN SHOULD DIE GIVING LIFE: The former Prime Minister’s Wife Madam Ida Odinga, regional representative of the UK’s Department for International Development Tony Daly, and community groups sign, pledging to end maternal deaths in Kenya during the launch of WRA Kenya in 2011. Photo Credit: WRA Kenya/Angel Katusia.
MIDWIVES & MIDWIFERY: Childbirth should be a happy moment for families and communities, not misery. No woman should die while giving birth. Midwives are vital to ensure that no woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth. Photo Credit: UNFPA/Douglas Waudo.
THE MESSAGE IS LOUD AND CLEAR: Maternal mortality is the single greatest indicator of health systems that fail to meet the basic needs of society’s poorest and most vulnerable women. This message was central to WRA Kenya advocacy activities and carried through communities on International Women’s Day, 2017. Photo Credit: WRA Kenya/Angel Katusia.
MARCHING FOR SAFE MOTHERHOOD: Citizens from different parts of Nairobi County, one of the highest burden county in terms of maternal mortality, march during International Women’s Day, 2017. Maternal mortality is the single greatest indicator of health systems that fail to meet the basic needs of society’s poorest and most vulnerable women. Photo Credit: WRA Kenya/ Angel Katusia.
UTILIZING GLOBAL PLATFORMS: WRA Kenya’s Communication Strategist Angel Katusia discusses Ending Preventable Maternal Mortality with Global Health Strategies' Christy Feig at the United Nations in September 2017.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: In this age and time, it’s absurd that women should die giving birth. Ending maternal deaths should be a priority of any nation. Here, women wait in a crowded health center and hope to get the care they need. Photo Credit: UNFPA/Douglas Waudo.
Thank you to our partners
Evidence for action
OAYouth Kenya
Amref Health Africa Kenya
Health NGOs Network (HENNET)
Contact Us
Angela Nguku
National Coordinator, WRA Kenya
As the National Coordinator for WRA Kenya, Angela provides the vision for the alliance and translates that vision into clear strategies and goals, then unites members to accomplish them. Angela is a highly regarded, transformational leader and program manager in the Reproductive Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health sector, bringing more than 13 years of dedicated work toward ending preventable maternal and newborn deaths in Kenya, throughout Africa and around the world. She has worked for AAHI, AMREF, Christian Aid, as an Independent Technical Consultant in the RMNCAH program development and management field, and as an international trainer, mentor and coach. A passionate midwife, Angela advocates for accountability for the health of mothers, newborns, adolescents and youth and for midwives’ voices to be heard.
Angela was first drawn to WRA while working in South Sudan and in the East African region where she experienced the sad reality of mothers and newborns dying daily from preventable causes. Moved by high maternal and newborn mortalities in her own country, Angela mobilized other likeminded players in Kenya and founded the WRA Kenya in 2009.
Angela holds Master’s degrees in health and in project management, and a Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and midwifery.
Click image for bio