{"id":4576,"date":"2025-12-01T23:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T23:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/?p=4576"},"modified":"2025-12-12T19:44:54","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T19:44:54","slug":"fighting-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/2025\/12\/01\/fighting-back\/","title":{"rendered":"<strong>Fighting Back<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (December 1<sup>st<\/sup> 2025)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The issue of gender-based exploitation (GBE) and gender-based violence (GBV) in Kenyan athletics is a big problem, but its victims and survivors are fighting back. Romania\u2019s Kenyan-born long-distance runner, Joan Chelimo Melli is leading the struggle. She set up Tirop\u2019s Angels to commemorate her murdered friend, seek justice for her and be an advocate to eliminate GBE and GBV. She  subsequently established Strides for Africa, through which she continues her advocacy work on GBE and GBV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>No Secret<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Strides for Africa<\/strong> provide assistance for aspiring athletes through access to facilities and combat the issues the exploited athletes face. The two athletes featured below have been assisted by her, but there is still a long way to travel before talented young women can utilise their athletic talent as they deserve to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Joan Chelimo Melli\u2019s fight for others while balancing the demands of competitive athletics is inspirational. It played a huge role in the Veteran Athletes Association (VAA) taking up cudgels against both GBE and GBV. It is now one of the VAA\u2019s core projects for the next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Kenyan Athletics Survivor 1<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Kenyan Athletics Survivor 1\" width=\"1220\" height=\"915\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MbYRX7fVpUs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Kenyan Athletics Survivor 2<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Athletics Survivor 2\" width=\"1220\" height=\"915\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ah0eHxU5hDs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Satish Sekar \u00a9 Satish Sekar (December 1st 2025) The issue of gender-based exploitation (GBE) and gender-based violence (GBV) in Kenyan athletics is a big problem,<span class=\"excerpt-hellip\"> [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1232],"tags":[837,838,831,1242,1520,1622],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4576"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4592,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4576\/revisions\/4592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowersmag.com\/empowersmagwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}