World of Children - 2007 Founders Honoree - Theresa Cheptoo

In 2007, Theresa Cheptoo was a 9th grade student at Limuru Girls High School who recently represented Kenyan children affected by Female Genital Mutilation and Early Marriages at the 51st United Nations Conference in New York City, considering the Status of Women, (February 2007). Theresa is an outspoken young woman who has trained hundreds of girls and boys to also be Child Rights Advocates in her community of Rift Valley Province. She established an Anti-Female Genital Mutilation and Early Marriages Advocacy Club in Chepareria Primary School in 2004, and recruited more than 200 boys and girls as members, who are now actively working to establish 13 additional clubs at schools in the region. Cheptoo is working in her own country, and her own community, to encourage people to abandon harmful traditional practices and adopt more positive, alternative rites of passage for the young women of the Pokot Culture. Theresa was awarded a 2007 World of Children Founder's Youth Award.