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Our Partner
From survivor to a movement of her own.
Our role isn’t to define recovery from the outside. It’s to recognize the people who understand the problem firsthand, invest in their leadership, and help create the conditions for their ideas to grow.
Sarah Omega’s story shows what happens when survivors aren’t simply included in the work. They lead it.
Let's End Fistula Initiative · Kenya
One survivor decides her story will reach beyond her own recovery.
Sarah Omega survived obstetric fistula. She went on to found and lead the Let's End Fistula Initiative, building an organization around the needs and experiences of women who had lived through the same injury.
Her vision went beyond treatment.
Women needed connection after surgery. They needed ways to rebuild income and confidence. They needed communities that understood what they had experienced.
And some wanted the opportunity to make sure another woman never went through the same thing alone.
Recovery becomes something women can do together.
LEFI built its work around Solidarity Groups, where fistula survivors come together for mutual support, social reintegration, and economic empowerment after treatment.
LEFI grew from 11 Solidarity Groups to 26, with support from Maternal Dignity Project (then Worldwide Fistula Fund). The network now connects more than 500 women.
Survivor Solidarity Groups · Kenya
Economic empowerment · Kenya
Recovery begins to create opportunity.
For many women, fistula affects much more than physical health. It can interrupt work, income, relationships, and a woman's place within her community.
LEFI's approach recognizes that returning home after treatment is only one part of recovery.
Through economic empowerment efforts connected to its survivor network, women have gone on to create 1,136 survivor-run businesses.
The women who lived through fistula begin helping prevent it.
As LEFI grew, survivors stepped into a new role: teacher-advocates.
LEFI developed a Ministry-approved Safe Motherhood curriculum that is delivered by survivors themselves.
Women who once needed information, treatment, and support are now carrying that knowledge into their own communities.
They help others understand safer pregnancy and childbirth. They talk openly about fistula and childbirth injuries.
Survivor led education · Kenya
Young Champion Fistula Clubs · Kenya
Then the movement reached young people.
In 2021, LEFI launched Young Champion Fistula Clubs, bringing fistula prevention and Safe Motherhood education to adolescents.
Working in partnership with Kenya's Ministry of Health, the clubs help young people understand how childbirth injuries can be prevented while encouraging education and economic independence over early marriage.
What began as support for a survivor led organization has grown into a network where women help one another recover, rebuild livelihoods, educate their communities, and carry prevention forward to the next generation.
Support This WorkThe LEFI Model
Recovery that drives connection.
Fistula can isolate a woman from the people, work, and community that once shaped her life. LEFI’s model works in the opposite direction.
It brings women together.
Solidarity Groups
A place to rebuild with women who understand.
LEFI’s 26 Solidarity Groups connect more than 500 fistula survivors across Kenya.
The groups create something that treatment alone cannot provide: a community of women who know what recovery actually feels like. Women support one another as they return to family and community life. They share experience, build confidence, pursue economic independence, and discover that their own stories can have value to someone else. For some women, that journey eventually leads from receiving support to providing it.
That transformation is at the center of LEFI’s work.
What’s Next
Can the women who survived fistula help prevent it for the next generation?
LEFI’s work is already beginning to answer that question.
It’s Safe Motherhood curriculum puts survivors at the front of community education as teacher advocates. It’s Young Champion Fistula Clubs bring prevention education to adolescents.
Together, those programs allow knowledge to travel in both directions. Survivors reach women and families today. Young champions carry that knowledge into tomorrow.The result is a model where recovery doesn’t stop with the woman who receives care.
It keeps moving outward.
Watch
Hear it in their own words.
Women connected through the Let’s End Fistula Initiative are rebuilding their lives together, creating businesses, teaching Safe Motherhood, and becoming advocates for the women and girls who come after them.
Stories of health and hope.
Behind every statistic is a woman, a family, and a story of resilience.
From 12 Years With Fistula to Founding a Movement
After living with obstetric fistula for 12 years, Sarah Omega found treatment and founded LEFI. Today, her organization helps women across Kenya reach care, rebuild their…
Read the Story
From Fistula Survivor to Safe Motherhood Advocate
Mwajuma developed obstetric fistula as a teenager and lived with the injury for eight years. After successful surgery through Let’s End Fistula Initiative, she returned to…
Read the Story
Leading Before Fistula Happens
Zuena is a student and youth leader in Bungoma County, Kenya, using education and advocacy to help prevent obstetric fistula before it happens. Through the Young…
Read the Story
After Two Fistulas, Basalirwa Built a Business and Began Again
After a prolonged labor and the loss of her baby, Basalirwa developed two different fistulas. Following two successful surgeries and reintegration support through TERREWODE, she turned…
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From Isolation to Independence
Eunice lived with obstetric fistula for three years, isolated from her community and unsure she would ever recover. After connecting with Let’s End Fistula Initiative and…
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After 20 Years With Fistula, Doris Rebuilt Her Life and Livelihood
Doris lived with obstetric fistula for 20 years before receiving treatment through LEFI. Afterward, a solidarity group and micro-loan helped her build a business, purchase land,…
Read the StoryFive Countries · One Mission
The work continues across the map.
Meet the other locally led partners working to end fistula community by community.
