The Editor had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Benta Opande, Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Women Teachers Association - KEWOTA. A warm and amiable person, her story is one of passion, bravery and resilience. “I think realizing that you’re not alone, that you are standing with millions of your sisters around the world is vital.” – Malala Yuafzai. So this quote by Yuafzai is befitting and resonates very well with her journey from the classroom to CEO, of the largest Women Association in Kenya.

Ms Benta Opande is a teacher by profession, trained at Kenya Science Teachers Training College, KSTC. A career that started 35 years ago, she remembers fondly her first posting in 1989 to Parklands Boys Secondary School, where she began by teaching Chemistry, Biology and Sports. But it is in teaching sports where her passion for inspiring people to excel and push the limits was born, and was solidified when she became the first female coach of the school hockey team.

She recalls that when she started coaching the boys, the team was performing poorly but soon after, the performance began to improve, and by the time she left, the team had gained recognition and was winning accolades in the National sports arena. It had become the team to beat.

This impressive performance enabled her to get her next posting to Buru Buru Girls High School, where in addition to Hockey, she introduced Basketball. However, sports remained pretty much extracurricular activity, with her main responsibility being teaching biology and chemistry.  

This went on for some time until her excellence in managing the Buru Buru girls’ sports department was recognized when her fellow teachers in Nairobi elected her as an executive committee member of the Nairobi Secondary Sports Association.

From Blackboard and Chalk to Advocacy
As she grew in her career in teaching, other members of the teaching fraternity who founded Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers (KUPPET) had noted her passion for advocacy and in 2002, Mr. Tom Chariga, founder member of KUPPET approached her to join the union an opportunity she gladly took up because of desire to improve the plight teachers. During the subsequent election she vied for the First Assistant Treasurer where she won convincingly. She held this position for 11 years and during this time she remained the only lady in the top leadership at KUPPET.

Benta recalls her time at KUPPET as being bitter sweet. Working as the only lady amongst men made it extremely difficult for her to champion gender related issues.  She says that lobbying and marshaling support was almost impossible. However after the promulgation of the new constitution in 2010, the opportunity to have gender balance arose. And she was finally able to lobby the KUPPET leadership and members to accommodate more women through affirmative.

This meant that women each of the 47 counties could now sit at the KUPPET National Governing Council and could take part in the decision-making process. She also lobbied for the creation of the position of The National Women Representative. A woman could now sit in the powerful National Executive Board. The current office bearer is Hon. Catherine Wambilianga, Women Rep, Bungoma County.

At this point she felt like she was better off at the Nairobi County office where she vied to be the Executive Secretary and won.  Upon assuming office she was able to bring on board 79 post primary schools into the organization by creating a network of school representatives and kept this numbers growing.

 But in 2012, KNUT impressed by her influence and dynamic leadership came knocking, and offered the opportunity to join their membership recruitment team as the Senior Executive Officer, in charge of recruitment. Taking this role with gusto, she grew the numbers of teachers at KNUT from 189,000 to 202,000.( Between October and December 2012) These numbers consisted mostly of post primary teachers.

Her stint at KNUT saw her begin building a network beyond Kenya.  One important link that proved to be successful was her engagements with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). By reaching out and engaging AFT she was able to get funding to develop operational manuals to support development of teachers.

Through this funding KNUT was able to come up with two manuals; the first was a strategic manual to help KNUT grow its membership numbers through empowerment of school representatives(POWER IN NUMBERS) and the other one to help train executive secretaries to understand the running of unions and leadership roles (EXECUTIVE SECRETARIES TRAINING MANUAL) KNUT soon after expanded her role to include recruitment and empowerment of ECDE teachers.  The summary pamphlet developed by her is still in use at kNUT to date.

Her dedication to KNUT did not go unnoticed and when the gender docket fell vacant she was promoted to be Executive Officer in charge of gender at KNUT. This promotion pushed her to the fore of championing women issues in the teaching profession, and after a visit to Gambia to attend a ‘women in leadership caucus for teachers’ she together with a few women in the KNUT leadership decided it was time a teachers organization for women was realised.

KEWOTA REGISTRATION:
While at the KUPPET as the Ass. National Treasurer, Benta realized that she had a lot of time at her disposal that allowed to attend to issues that affected women teachers both at the classroom level and at the union leadership. Armed with empirical evidence, a vision and passion, she approached other like-minded women and registered Kenya Women Teachers Association (KEWOTA) in 2007. She got the support of SNV Netherlands and Dowatu from Ghana to assemble women teachers and share her vision how KEWOTA can help them articulate issues of gender in Kenya. From the very onset, she says that the stakes were against KEWOTA because most women were not convinced that they could succeed. They were concerned about the amount of work needed to be done and the potential obstacles.

However, she says that being consistent and focused has helped grow the Association day by day. She is humbled by how far KEWOTA has come and says that though the journey has not been smooth, she is finally happy to be steering a organization that aspires to see women teachers thrive.  The Association she says is rearing to go with many initiatives in the world, including supporting women teachers through; Financial empowerment, with support of partners providing investment advice and opportunities, career and workplace advocacy and training.

In her words “ Women can do so much if they get support and are empowered.  As an Association we appreciate all the challenges girls face especially teenage pregnancy, ability to afford sanitary towels, drop out rates being higher for girls when parents cannot afford to educate all their children, mental health issues among others. However our experience is that we have seen many women stand together to make these experiences bearable by assisting in various ways.”

KEWOTA
The Kenya Women Teachers Association (KEWOTA) is a vibrant welfare society and community for female teachers in Kenya. The Association consists of female teachers employed by the TSC, privately employed female teachers, ECDE female teachers, SNE female teachers and other women in the education sector.

The leaders are so passionate about women empowerment that some of them quit top national jobs, to advocate for female teachers and find ways to enhance better living standards for female teachers, especially those with families.

What the Association does for female teachers in Kenya
KEWOTA was founded not only to lobby and advocate on behalf of women teachers but also to enhance better living standards for female teachers and their families. KEWOTA does this through:
Financial empowerment, Investment opportunities, Development projects, Career and workplace advocacy, Sponsorship for both the girl child and women teachers, donations and - Training to mention just but a few.

To enhance service delivery, KEWOTA has established regional offices in counties across the whole country. Female teachers can contact or visit our officers to join the organization, report any career-related issues or request any of the services offered by KEWOTA.

Unlike education unions which focus on pressuring governments, KEWOTA mainly focuses on directly impacting the lives of female teachers socially, career-wise and financially.

Benta reiterates that there has been a lot of misinformation out there about the critical role the organization plays on a daily basis. The gender gap in teacher leadership still glaringly remains and so all education stakeholders are invited to embrace this organization for the betterment of all teachers including men

KEWOTA being a membership driven organization has seen a lot of successes and challenges. The greatest challenge faced is in increasing membership. Out of a potential of 200,000 possible members from TSC alone, KEWOTA is shy of only 30,000 members. The organization is seeking for partnership with like-minded organization in terms of training on negotiation, advocacy and lobbying  skills. More needs to be done on creating a powerful team of school representatives.

Kewota is keen on capacity building of county representatives as peace ambassadors, paralegal officers and mental health champions.

The greatest threat to women empowerment and development is early pregnancy for our young girls. KEWOTA is addressing the matter by the developing a project called THE SEMA PROJECT( Sexuality Education and Mentorship for adolescents). KEWOTA hopes that in due course, partners will come on board to support this project whose end result will be the publishing of fliers, developing trainers and creation of awareness clubs in schools.

We sum up the Benta Opanda and KEWOTA intriguing journey and wishing her all the best as she continues to steer the KEWOTA ship “ Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg