A Lifeline for Girls in Crisis Along Kenya's Coast
In Tana River County, a girl who has been raped may be told that the nearest post-rape care is not in her county. In Kwale, a pregnant teenager may be quietly removed from school with no one to advocate for her return. In Kilifi, a young woman may know she has rights but have no safe space to claim them.
These are the realities that shaped the Youth Voices and Action Initiative (YVAI), a community-based organisation founded in 2019 by a group of young women who had lived through these very experiences. What began as a small peer-support network in Mombasa has grown into a structured movement operating across six counties along Kenya's coast: Mombasa, Kilifi, Kwale, Tana River, Lamu, and Taita Taveta.
YVAI runs safe spaces in each county where adolescent girls and young women can access information about their sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), receive psychosocial support, and connect to referral services. These spaces are not clinics. They are community-rooted, peer-led environments designed to meet young women where they are, in language and settings they trust.
"We don't just talk about rights. We create the conditions for girls to actually exercise them."
The organisation has trained over 200 peer educators across the coast, many of whom are themselves survivors of gender-based violence or early pregnancy. These educators lead sessions on contraception, consent, menstrual health, and legal rights, and they serve as first responders when a girl in their community needs help.
YVAI's impact extends beyond direct service delivery. The organisation has become a recognised voice in county-level advocacy, contributing to the development of gender-based violence response protocols in Tana River and Kilifi counties. In 2024, YVAI was invited to participate in a national review of adolescent SRHR policies, bringing the perspectives of coastal communities into a process that had historically been dominated by Nairobi-based organisations.
This trajectory, from grassroots peer support to policy engagement, did not happen by accident. It was enabled by a period of sustained, flexible accompaniment from an international partner that provided not just funding, but mentorship, organisational development support, and strategic guidance over several years.
When that partner withdrew in early 2025, YVAI was left without its primary source of funding and technical support. The organisation had grown rapidly, but its systems, financial management, governance structures, and fundraising capacity, had not yet matured enough to sustain that growth independently.
The withdrawal was not hostile. It was the result of a global restructuring that affected dozens of local partners across the region. But the effect on YVAI was immediate: programmes were scaled back, peer educators lost their stipends, and the organisation's leadership was forced to spend more time seeking survival funding than delivering services.
YVAI's story is not one of failure. It is a story of what happens when promising, locally led work is interrupted before it has had the chance to become self-sustaining. The organisation still operates. Its peer educators still show up. But the gap between what it can do and what it was doing, and what the communities it serves still need, is growing.
This is the kind of organisation that benefits most from the approach Third Sector Builders was created to provide: not a new grant, but a sustained relationship. Not a template, but a tailored plan. Not a handoff, but an accompaniment that builds the internal systems, governance, and fundraising capacity that allow organisations like YVAI to thrive on their own terms.