More than 14,000 Somali women and girl refugees now have access to Lifeline radios. According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) only 1 in 500 Somali women refugees had access to radio until Lifeline radios were distributed in the Dadaab refugee camps of arid northeastern Kenya. With the ongoing civil strife in Somalia, the population of the Dadaab camps has swelled to over 250,000 refugees - more than half are women.

Most women and girls have had little or no education and no voice in society. In the camps, as in Somalia, they face early and forced marriages, high levels of gender violence and female genital cutting.

Access to information for women, many who've lived in the camps from when they were established in 1991 and 1992, is severely limited. Although radio is the main source of information, transistor radios are controlled by men. Women report beatings from their husbands for using the 'family' radio and 'wasting' the battery power.

Lifeline radios provide widespread listening access

With funding from the Vodafone Group Foundation, Safaricom Foundation and a US-based family foundation, these Somali women are gaining access to much needed information for the first time. Women form listening groups to discuss topics that affect their lives and advocate for change.

The Freeplay Foundation teamed-up with the UNHCR, CARE, Save the Children, the National Council of Churches of Kenya, Handicap International, the African Women and Children's Feature Service, the Pastoralists Journalist Network and the radio station STAR-FM (a local station) for the Somali Women's Learning Project. UNHCR reports that since the introduction of the radios "there is greater access to information and better interaction amongst the women refugees". Women listen to Somali language programmes broadcast on local and international stations like the BBC World Service.

The initial project phase benefits Somali women living in the camps, while the next two years will target Kenyan Somali women who face similar challenges, with even less support than those living inside the camps.

The project also benefits the broadcasters. Trainers from the Pastoralists Journalist Network are Somali-speaking radio journalists, who not only teach the women, but also learn the critical issues that listeners' groups would like to hear discussed.

Somali women attend a radio and listening group training session in the Ifo refugee camp.

By the time phase three of the project is complete, an estimated 24,000 women will have access to news and educational programmes through Lifeline radios.