Margret never sat in a classroom.

She is a Pokot woman, born at a time when girls simply weren’t sent to school. While other children carried books, Margret carried a herding stick.

As a young girl, she cared for the family’s animals in the bush and carried her younger siblings on her back. She underwent female genital cutting — not because she wanted to, but because it was expected of her before marriage. And before she’d had the chance to understand what life was, she was married off, still a child herself, into a polygamous family.

That marriage brought its own struggle. In a polygamous home, a woman largely provides for her own children on her own. Margret’s husband was there, but stretched thin across his other wives and many children, so she was left to raise hers alone. She struggled to provide the basics, including food, clothes, shelter and school fees.

But Margret made a decision that changed everything — her children would not live the life she had lived.

She never learned to read or write herself, but she decided her children must go to school. With no job and no support, she took on any casual work she can find, selling anything, doing anything, just to keep them there. She is still paying their school fees today.

When you ask her about it, she answers:

“I wish my parents had known the importance of education. If I had gone to school, I would not be struggling like this in life.”

Today, Margret is more than a mother. She’s a Champion Mother. As part of So They Can’s Champions’ Network, she’s one of our local volunteers who goes door to door in her community, advocating for children’s rights and education. She goes from home to home telling other parents: “Take your girls to school. Don’t let them go through what I went through.”

Margret never had the chance to learn how to write her own name. But she’s making sure her children will one day write their own future.

This is Margret, a woman who lost her opportunity to sit in the classroom, but is safeguarding the next generation of children in her community through education.

Learn more about So They Can’s Champions’ Network here.

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Written by Moureen — So They Can Msomi Scholarship Alumni and Ambassadors of Hope Champion