Reaching boys before harm happens

Stopping Violence Before It Starts

We reach boys before harm happens and equip them to build healthier relationships, safer communities and a different future.

Lifesong Kenya brings prevention education into schools, football pitches and communities, using peer mentorship, positive masculinity and practical conversations about dignity, respect, boundaries and responsibility.

The Earlier We Reach Boys, the More Harm We Can Prevent

In Kenya, an estimated 30% of girls and 18% of boys experience sexual violence by the age of 18. Most prevention work reaches women and girls after harm has already occurred, teaching them how to protect themselves from a threat that already exists.

We work on the other side of that equation. Seventy percent of gender-based violence in Kenya is perpetrated by boys and men — which means the earlier we reach boys, the fewer survivors there will ever need to be.

Our Prevention and Advocacy program exists to close that gap: reaching boys while they are still forming their sense of manhood, not after they’ve already caused harm or become the boy in crisis we later have to house and heal.

What We Do

In-School Curriculum

We deliver age-appropriate lessons on healthy boundaries, consent, and treating others — women, girls, boys, and every vulnerable person — with dignity, respect and honor. This isn’t a one-off assembly talk; it’s a structured curriculum boys move through over time, in the schools we already partner with.

Peer Mentor Training

Boys listen to boys. We identify and train peer mentors from within the student body — equipping them to carry these conversations into their own friend groups, classrooms and teams long after our facilitators have left the room. It’s how one lesson becomes a hundred conversations.

Community Advocacy

Prevention doesn’t stop at the school gate. We run community awareness campaigns — working alongside chiefs, churches, women’s groups and local leaders — to raise awareness of gender-based violence and its impact on women, girls, boys and other vulnerable members of the community, and to shift the norms that allow it to continue.

Positive Masculinity Coaching

We use the game as the entry point — building coaching sessions around teamwork, fair play, and respect for opponents, so that lessons about power, boundaries and honoring women and girls are absorbed the way boys already learn best: by doing, not just listening.

Reaching Boys Where They Are

Our prevention work focuses on:

School-going boys
Adolescent boys
Peer mentors
Teachers and school communities
Parents and caregivers
Community leaders
Communities affected by gender-based violence

The current program combines school-based education, peer mentoring, football and community partnerships.

Prevention Starts With Participation

Lifesong Kenya currently works through schools, football and community engagement to create spaces where boys can learn, practise and model healthier ways of relating to others.

Our football and school programs give boys opportunities to build relationships, develop responsibility and learn that leadership is not about power over others — it is about how we use our influence.

Our Reach

2 schools currently engaged
200 boys reached through the curriculum
50 peer mentors trained
5 community advocacy sessions held to date
500 participants reached during community advocacy sessions

WHAT IS NEEDED

Help Us to Reach More Boys Before Harm Happens

Our next step is to take prevention deeper into schools and communities.

Support is needed for:

Prevention curriculum materials
School-based sessions
Peer mentor training
Coach and facilitator stipends
Football equipment
Community advocacy activities
Monitoring and learning
Expansion into additional schools

Ways to Support

Help us bring age-appropriate prevention education to boys in schools.
Equip a boy to become a positive influence among his peers.
Help us use football as a platform for positive masculinity and community engagement.
Bring Lifesong’s prevention work into your school.
Invest in violence prevention and healthier communities.

Every boy reached is an opportunity to influence a future man.

As a mother, it's extremely hard to accept that your son is involved with social vices. I would get agitated and really question my capacity as a parent. But, Lifesong Kenya has helped me to get through this by helping my son to overcome his struggles through coaching and constant guidance.

Margaret Wanjiku

Mother