The year 2017 is an election year in Kenya. The constitution demands that not more than two thirds of the members of elective public bodies shall be of the same gender.  In Kenya politics are dominated by men. In order to make sure women get at least the one third they need all the help they can get.

Media Focus on Africa, MFA, (http://www.mediafocusonafrica.org/) in conjunction with the Federation of Women Lawyers, FIDA, (http://fidakenya.org/) organises several training rounds for female aspirants politicians form almost a dozen counties.

I trained them in how they can get media attention to their advantage and how to use the social media. In many cases women had to be convinced that the media is not there just to undermine them.

Remarkable was also that a considerable number of aspirants had no email address or Facebook nor Twitter account. We managed to get them interviewed by local and national media which boosted their profile but was a hands on experience to deal with the media.

How to get their message across to the public was the main goal and after a number of sessions the women had created a to the point media strategy.