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I See Maasai Development Initiative.

    Our Plan:

  • 1. RESCUE:

    Provide the orphaned Maasai girls with loving refuge, education costs and living supplies

  • 2. BUILD:

    Locate and select a project manager in Kenya and raise $50,000 which will be used to build a village that will provide community, housing, education and medical care

  • 3. SELF-SUSTAIN:

    Create complete financial self-reliance of the village through projects like tourist safaris and crafts exchange

Who We Are

I See Maasai Development Initiative (ISMDI) is a Maasai-founded and operated organization dedicated to eradicating female genital mutilation in Nairobi and Maasai Mara, Kenya. ISMDI’s goal is to build a self-sustaining village to accommodate young Maasai girls who decide to forgo the circumcision practiced for generations by their culture. Maasai girls who reject the ceremonial practice are disowned by their families and rejected by their community for failing to meet the expectations and tradition of their people. For most of the 9-12 year old Massai girls who do undergo the circumcision, a lifetime of immense physical and psychological agony results. After the girls are horrifically stripped bare of their external sexual organs, one in five die. For the survivors both physical intimacy and childbirth become painful experiences that recall the nightmare of their mutilation. Besides building a village to take in the young Maasai refugees, ISMDI is out to educate the Massai people of the brutal consequences of female genital mutilation while creating alternative rites of passage ceremonies for the culture to embrace.

Nelson Ole Reiyia, Founder

  • Kenya

    P.O.BOX 20213-00100
    Nairobi, Kenya
    T: (254) 072.173.1927
    Nelsonreiyia74@gmail.com

  • U.S.A.

    20 Lexington Avenue
    Brooklyn NY 11238
    T: 718.783.0329 F: 718.228.5973
    usinfo@iseemaasi.org