Our beginning
The seeds of OUR STORY were sown in the founder’s personal experience: “I believe my journey with Mentoring and Empowerment Programme for Young Women (MEMPROW) started the day my mother learned that she was to be married to a man she hardly knew.She had gone home for holidays from Gayaza High School, the best school for girls even then. A few days into her holiday, she noticed that there was more activity than usual in her home. When she asked her brother what the action was about, she was shown a new group of cows and was told that they were the bride wealth paid for her.
Many years later when she and I could talk woman to woman, I asked why she did not refuse and go back to Gayaza. After all, Ms. Hornby, a missionary who had made it her mission to educate girls from Kigezi where my mother hailed from, had made arrangements for her to stay in one the of Chiefs’ homes while at Gayaza.“My child, it was taboo then to return cows given in bride wealth” she said, in the saddest tone I had ever known her to use. So it was that in 1941 a few cows sealed my mother’s fate. The story is the same for many girls even today; such is the power of patriarchy.” – Dr. Hilda Mary Tadria
The birth of Memprow
MEMPROW was born out of a righteous anger about what is happening to girls and young women today, but most especially the culture of silence that shrouds defilement and domestic violence.Together with the support of her husband in 2008, MEMPROW was established as a feminist organisation that brings girls together in institutions of learning and out-of-school young women from across Uganda to provide them with the skills and knowledge they need to become successful, confident, and self-reliant individuals.
MEMPROW’s feminist agenda is to empower, mentor and give voice to girls and young women to take charge of their lives and participate in leadership. MEMPROW’s agenda is also an activist agenda seeking for change in the underlying causes of gender inequality, not just at local but international levels as well.Our organisation provides spaces for young girls to learn not only from each other but to also learn from women of older generations. MEMPROW believes that building a generation of women who are informed, self-assured, and independent gives them voice to speak out against social inequalities and injustices, which is healthy and important to our communities.