Mothers and Babies Behind Bars

This new intervention focuses on the well being and dignity of incarcerated women and their accompanying children. We provide gender responsive support services designed to transform the correctional environment into a space of rehabilitation and care.

Our approach for 2026 focuses on several critical areas:

• Childhood and education: establishing functional crèches and ensuring school-age children are resettled and enrolled in schools.
• Psychosocial care: conducting motivational sessions and distributing inspirational materials to support mental well-being.
• Legal and staff training: providing legal aid and paralegal support services, while training prison officers on gender-responsive management practices.
• Economic skills: equipping incarcerated women with entrepreneurship, bookkeeping and life skills to support their eventual reintegration.

The unseen sentences

ENAF’s commitment to justice extends behind the gates of Kenya’s correctional facilities. We believe that while a mother serves her time, her child shouldn’t lose their childhood. ENAF is transforming prison environments into spaces of dignity, nutrition, and development, ensuring that an innocent child’s future isn’t dictated by their mother’s past.

The “collateral inmates”

In Kenya’s correctional facilities, a silent crisis unfolds. When a mother is arrested, her young child, guilty of no crime, often enters the gates with her. These children swap playgrounds for concrete cells and nursery rhymes for the sound of locking gates.

Currently, 80% of the 3,000 female inmates in Kenya are young women under 35. Many are primary caregivers, meaning their incarceration leaves their children either abandoned or imprisoned alongside them. These formative years are being lost to an environment designed for punishment, not for the specialised needs of a growing child.

The integrated solution

At ENAF, we don’t just provide aid; we provide a pathway out. ENAF focuses on three critical areas to ensure that incarceration doesn’t define the next generation.

• Dignity and survival: “Dignity Packs” for mothers (hygiene and sanitary products) and “Baby Packs” for infants (nutrition and warm clothing). No mother should have to choose between her dignity and her child’s health.
• Safe play zones: transforming cold concrete into colourful, child-friendly spaces. These daycares within prisons provide soft flooring, educational toys, and a stimulating environment essential for early childhood brain development.
• Freedom through skills: the cycle of “survival crimes” ends with economic power. We equip prison workshops with sewing machines, hairdressing kits, and baking equipment, so a mother leaves prison with a trade and the ability to provide for her child legally and sustainably.

600 lives, one mission

ENAF’s immediate objective is to reach the 600 most vulnerable women and children within the justice system. We invite you to partner with us. Whether through a one-time gift for a Dignity Pack or a larger investment in the Legacy Project daycares, your support ensures that a mother’s past does not dictate her child’s future. To give by M-PESA, use paybill 972800 with the account name “Mother & Baby”.