Introduction
The Teenage Mothers Workshop was held at Kunste Hotel in Nakuru, Kenya on January 6, 2006. The workshop was sponsored by UNESCO Paris and organized by Kenya National Commission for UNESCO.

There were seventy two participants who were drawn from twenty four districts in all the eight provinces in Kenya.

The seminar was organ-ized to: help empower teenage mothers by transforming their understanding of human rights and government’s responsibility to protect and fulfill those rights; assist the teenage mothers to develop the vision, confidence, knowl-edge and skills needed to work for positive changes to their situations; and ensuring that basic needs are met such that

they are able to participate in change processes.

The workshop objectives were as follows:-
• Guiding and Counselling of teenage mothers and school dropouts on life skills and continuing education.
• Empowerment of teenage mothers on Social and eco-nomic development.
• Sharing of knowledge and experiences.
The topics discussed were as follows:

Life skills and continuing
Education for self empowerment
Life skills are abilities to acquire, practise and apply in our daily lives in order to construct and positively make decisions towards daily chal-lenges. Life skills will help one to:
• Live positively with friends and other people.
• Recognize and avoid risky situations and behaviour.
• Make positive choices about his or her health.
• Make informed choice.
• Make positive contributions to the wider community.

In addition to this, they assist an individual to acquire good leadership skills through the ability to cope with emo-tions such as anger and fear. Some of these skills include, self - esteem, assertiveness, peer resistance skills and effec-tive communication.

Starting and Running income
generating activities
The objectives of this topic were:
• To equip the participants with skills and knowledge of Income Generating Activities (I.G.A.).
• To sensitize participants on how to initiate various IGA’s.
• To provide them with a forum to clearly map their way forward in self-sustaining IGAs.

Participants suggested various options for the establishment of IGAs. Among them were: fish mongering especially those from the lake side, poultry keeping, selling of vegetables and farm pro-ducts, hair dressing, pedicure, manicure and barbering, run-ning of food kiosk, tailoring and tie and dye of fabrics.

Management skills
and sustainability
These are the techniques that one requires in order to effectively run a business. They include; book keeping, maintaining a profit and loss account and costing.

The participants were also exposed to basic skills for business sustainability including: developing a culture of saving, opening a savings and loss account, affordably at the local post office branches, networking with people who do the same kind of business and following strictly the legal aspects of operating a business which involve acquiring license for the business, paying taxes promptly and using the stan-dard weighing machines.

Education for self empowerment
The Government of Kenya has given all teenage mothers in the country a chance to return to school and gain education. Education is an important tool life towards gaining life skills, it helps curb ignorance; it is a path to independence and facilitates exploitation of one’s full potential. Through edu-cation, one is able to know and understand ones rights, and therefore seek development and participation, legal advice and presentation of the rights.

At the end of the course, participants were facilitated to start their own income generating activities through funds given by UNESCO Paris Office.

Way Forward
The participants suggested that with facilitation in cash and kind they would carry out the following activities:

• Establishment of public library which will assist in the sensitization of the com-munity on issues of reproductive health. The library would also be used as an important resource centre for reference purposes.
• Capacity building of the teenage mothers in order to equip them with the neces-sary life skills including: tailoring, poultry keeping, small scale farming.

It was noted that a number of teenage mothers had not completed their education. Therefore, a return-to-school message was emphasized as this will give them a competitive advantage over other people in the society while searching for livelihoods.

Kenya National Commis-sion for UNESCO was requested to organize similar work-shops targeting more people in similar circumstances, especially the disadvantaged girls at the district level.