One on One
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From Blackboard and Chalk to Advocacy As she grew in her career in teaching , other members of the teaching fraternity who founded Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers ( KUPPET ) had noted her passion for advocacy and in 2002 , Mr . Tom Chariga , founder member of KUPPET approached her to join the union an opportunity she gladly took up because of desire to improve the plight teachers . During the subsequent election she vied for the First Assistant Treasurer where she won convincingly . She held this position for 11 years and during this time she remained the only lady in the top leadership at KUPPET .
Benta recalls her time at KUPPET as being bitter sweet . Working as the only lady amongst men made it extremely difficult for her to champion gender related issues . She says that lobbying and marshaling support was almost impossible . However after the promulgation of the new constitution in 2010 , the opportunity to have gender balance arose . And she was finally able to lobby the KUPPET leadership and members to accommodate more women through affirmative .
This meant that women each of the 47 counties could now sit at the KUPPET National Governing Council and could take part in the decisionmaking process . She also lobbied for the creation of the position of The National Women Reprentative . A woman could now sit in the powerful National Executive Board . The current office bearer is Hon . Catherine Wambilianga , Women Rep , Bungoma County .
At this point she felt like she was better off at the Nairobi County office where she vied to be the Executive Secretary and won . Upon assuming office she was able to bring on board 79 post primary schools into the organization by creating a network of school representatives and kept this numbers growing .
But in 2012 , KNUT impressed by her influence and dynamic leadership came knocking , and offered the opportunity to join their membership recruitment team as the Senior Executive Officer , in charge of recruitment . Taking this role with gusto , she grew the numbers of teachers at KNUT from 189,000 to 202,000 .( Between October and December 2012 ) These numbers consisted mostly of post primary teachers .
Her stint at KNUT saw her begin building a network beyond Kenya . One important link that proved to be successful was her engagements with the American Federation of Teachers ( AFT ). By reaching out and engaging AFT she was able to get funding to develop operational manuals to support development of teachers .
Through this funding KNUT was able to come up with two manuals ; the first was a strategic manual to help KNUT grow its membership numbers through empowerment of school representatives ( POWER IN NUMBERS ) and the other one to help train executive secretaries to understand the running of unions and leadership roles ( EXECUTIVE SECRETARIES TRAINING MANUAL ) KNUT soon after expanded her role to include recruitment and empowerment of ECDE teachers . The summary pamphlet developed by her is still in use at knut todate .
Her dedication to KNUT did not go unnoticed and when the gender docket fell vacant she was promoted to be Executive Officer in charge of gender at KNUT . This promotion pushed her to the fore of championing women issues in the teaching profession , and after a visit to Gambia to attend a ‘ women in leadership caucus for teachers ’ she together with a few women in the KNUT leadership decided it was time a teachers organization for women was realised .
KEWOTA REGISTRATION : While at the KUPPET as the Ass . National Treasurer , Benter realized that she had a lot of time at her disposal that allowed to attend to issues that affected women teachers both at the classroom level
I think realizing that you ’ re not alone , that you are standing with millions of your sisters around the world is vital – Malala Yuafzai
and at the union leadership . Armed with empirical evidence , a vision and passion , she approached other like-minded women and registered Kenya Women Teachers Association ( KEWOTA ) in 2007 . She got the support of SNV Netherlands and Dowatu from Ghana to assemble women teachers and share her vision how KEWOTA can help them articulate issues of gender in Kenya . From the very onset , she says that the stakes were against KEWOTA because most women were not convinced that they could succeed . They were concerned about the amount of work needed to be done and the potential obstacles .
However , she says that being consistent and focused has helped grow the Association day by day . She is humbled by how far KEWOTA has come and says that though the journey has not been smooth , she is finally happy to be steering a organization that aspires to see women teachers thrive . The Association she says is rearing to go with many initiatives in the world , including supporting women teachers through ; Financial empowerment , with support of partners providing investment advice and opportunities , career and workplace advocacy and training .
In her words “ Women can do so EdSource Quarterly | Oct-Dec l 2021