About Us

OUR VISION

We work with communities to unleash their potentials and give space to the less privileged.

OUR MISSION

To socially and economically empower communities through promoting and advancing gender equality to achieve a sustainable development.

CORE VALUES

. Integrity
. Transparency
. Community-driven
. Team-work

Who We Are

We are an indigenous women and youth led organization that strengthens the voices of the less privileged with a focus to women and girls, while promoting education for all children without cultural, health or gender discrimination and promoting women economic empowerment activities, with a desire to obtain a sustainable gender mainstream amongst the indigenous communities of Laikipia North, Isiolo North and Samburu East Sub-counties.

The Founder

The New Dawn Pacesetter is a brain child of Emily Lerosion a practicing and experienced human right defender, a community development worker and a seasoned frontline women’s rights defender, through Practice and documentation and amplifying of her grassroots work through media platforms. Born from the Samburu indigenous community, Emily has witnessed her fellow girls and the vulnerable children experience the challenges associated with mistreatment. She managed to overcome this through her father’s efforts.

Emily Lerosion finished school and got a concern for her fellow Samburu girls and the vulnerable children due to the challenges they have continued to face, she tried to be their voice in various organizations she worked for, like PA-MOJA Connecting People and Wildlife, Ol Pejeta Conservancy and Samburu Women Trust. This has been through various friends she met in her line of duty.

Upon working with these organizations to uplift the girl child esteem and making her a noble person in life both to herself and her society, Emily Lerosion came to realize that most of the girls and the vulnerable children getting education scholarships are still prone to these negative cultural practices whenever they get back to their communities when not in school (over the school holidays). They keep pleading with her to talk with the school principals in their respective schools to retain them in school when schools close. This becomes almost impossible, as the principals do not have any allocation budget from the government to sustain them in school over the school holidays. These girls and vulnerable children are therefore forced to go to their respective homes and endure the challenges while others are unable to endure and become victims of circumstances.

As much as all these efforts are put across, freedom from all forms of discrimination against children remains only partly fulfilled, and governments and societies must galvanize efforts if true freedom is to be won.

Policies and programs initiated must be duty-bound to take into consideration the differing, yet critical needs of children in terms of physical protection from sexual and physical exploitation, discrimination in all forms including the field of education, and increased awareness of the struggles being faced by both boys and girls today. In this regard, Emily Lerosion therefore saw the need to start up an organization with people from her community to get a long lasting solution for the change of a girl child’s life and that of a vulnerable child, putting into consideration the support of any vulnerable boy child through school in order to bring about gender equality without discrimination.

She begun by working with various women groups in her community towards achieving her dream through The New Dawn Pacesetter, an Indigenous women and youth led organization that strengthens the voices of the less privileged with a focus to women and girls, while promoting education for all children without cultural, health or gender discrimination and promoting women economic empowerment activities, with a desire to obtain a sustainable gender mainstream amongst the indigenous communities if Laikipia North, Isiolo North, and Samburu East sub counties in the Northern Kenya. that also works to bring about a peaceful cohesive living among the many indigenous communities in Laikipia North, Isiolo North and Samburu East Counties in the North of Kenya. Emily Lerosion is the Founder and Director of the New Dawn Pacesetter.

Emily says “My life is so much inspired by Harriet Tubman (Araminta Ross) statement: – “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you, the strength, the patience and the passion to reach to the stars to change the world.’ I have a dream, and with the strength, the patience, the passion and the positive attitude I have towards it, I believe my dream to bring this change to my society will come true.”

Her tribe is Samburu who are pastoralists and are one among the many indigenous communities in East Africa where women and girls’ rights are still not fully addressed. Her life goal is, “women can make a real difference in their survival, dignity and wellbeing as long as they team up with one voice and let the society know and understand their importance then stand up for their voice and act.

Emily Lerosion also believes that by getting a chance to work with The New Dawn Pacesetter team, which now comprises of 5 other board member and a total of over 200 grassroots women, they will be able to create space, empower and also input issues as a people aspiring to stand up for and raise the voices of the voiceless for re-dressing both at the community and policy making processes locally, nationally, regionally and globally. Only then is when she believes they can make a real difference to this world.