David Stratton and Christina Stratton Husband and wife David and Christina Stratton were in Kenya, East Africa, visiting schools and asked people there what they needed most. They learned that one item would keep girls from being harmed during the day while also ensuring they stayed in school.  Wanting to give these people what they required most, the couple, along with others from their nonprofit group, L Squared, obliged. They’ve since been on a mission to supply them and others with this basic essential.  “We were very shocked to learn that what the majority of the schools were asking for was pads for their girls,” Christina said. “They explained that when the girls are menstruating, they don’t go to school because they don’t have the products, something so simple that many women here in America take for granted. I can just drive to Walmart or Target. They can’t do that over there, and so, they’re subjected to staying at home. Because of that, they get abused sexually.”   David added that these families live on large, isolated plots of land. During the day, most everyone, he said, is out working or in school. So, when these young girls are at home alone, they’re putting themselves at serious risk.   “There are bad actors known to be very nomadic,” David continued. “They roam around and understand that this is someone they can target. That’s what happens. They come by and impregnate her, and then the parents say, ‘Well, we can’t take care of you and your kids, so you’re on your own.’”  Parents in these villages will sell their young pregnant daughters, typically to the men who impregnated them. By selling their daughters off, these families not only get rid of an expensive “problem,” but they also turn a much-needed profit. And those men who buy the girls will often make them their wives.   Many of these men have up two to 14 wives, some even up to 40, and that’s no exaggeration, David said.   “That’s how men prove their value and their worth over there,” Christina added. “If you have many wives, you’re very rich. To the men, it’s the same as saying, ‘I have 100 cows.’ And these girls are treated the same, sometimes worse.”  In an interview at the L Squared office in Valencia, David, founder and CEO of the nonprofit, and his wife, Christina, vice president, spoke about their mission to keep these Kenyan girls in school. It’s of utter importance, they said, because once these girls get pregnant and are married off, they’re typically doomed to their situation for the rest of their lives.   Christina Stratton picks out vibrant patterns for handmade reusable sanitary pads she’ll sew earlier this week in the L Squared Valencia office. Katherine Quezada/The Signal One of the L Squared projects that helps keep these girls in school, which, in turn, offers them a more promising future, is what David and Christina call the Precious Pads Project. School representatives, social workers and other governmental organizations in Kenya said that if girls stay in school, then the cycle of abuse stops.   “If they’re missing a week out of every month, that’s going to cause an education gap,” Christina said. “So, they’re not succeeding. They flunk out, they get embarrassed, they don’t want to return. Or they can’t return because they don’t have enough education.”  That’s another burden on many of these parents, she added, making it, again, easier for them to give their daughters up.   “They say, ‘We might as well sell you to this 70-year-old man for 10 or 15 goats, and that way I can at least provide food for the rest of my children. And if this man can provide me with all of these animals, clearly, he’s rich enough to take care of my daughter.’ Though, that’s never the case,” Christina said.  Another fact, according to David, is that, in one town they visited, only one girl had ever graduated from high school. That’s because these men are preying upon them at very young ages. Once they’re married off, they don’t ever go back to school. Their education is done.  David Stratton, earlier this week in his Valencia office, points out places on a map that he and his group L Squared have visited to assist Kenyan local tribes. Katherine Quezada/The Signal L Squared has vowed to keep these girls in school. But David and Christina said it’s tough to help them all because predators are coming for girls who are as young as 5 years old.   It’s like a pre-order, David said, and it’s big business. It’s also a way of life for the men over there.  “They’ll ask me, ‘Why don’t you have more wives?’” David said. “Or, ‘So, how many wives are you going to take?’”  David talked about one of his own female team members who came with them on one of the L Squared trips to Kenya. The young woman was unmarried. One of the local men in the village tried to buy her, offering David various assets for her. Of course, David shut that down.  “We have an 11-year-old daughter,” Christina added. “We bring her. And there are girls my daughter’s age that are already mothers. And so, my daughter sees this, and she’s like, ‘Is she holding her baby brother?’ And I’m like, ‘No, that’s her son.’”  If that’s not bad enough, these families, which include a mother and what could be over a dozen kids, are living together in very small structures called manyattas — huts made from mud, cow dung and sticks. L Squared is committed to improving these realities.   Manyattas — huts made from mud, cow dung and sticks — often house families that include a mother and what could be over a dozen kids. L Squared works in this minyata on Aug. 5, 2024, in Maasai Land, Kenya. Photo courtesy of Christina Stratton David started the nonprofit organization about two years ago. The Precious Pads Project is a more recent effort. Before making the pads, the group had been providing disposable ones. They eventually went the reusable route for practical reasons.  “I was originally against it — I was like, ‘That’s weird,’” Christina said. “But we were pouring all this money into disposable pads. We were continuing to go to these schools, and the whole point of our organization is to make people self-sustainable.”  The reusable pads are made to last anywhere from five to eight years in America, mainly because washing machines will wear the material down.   “Over there,” Christina said, “they wash everything by hand. So, the pads are going to last much longer than eight years for these girls. This ensures them to stay in school for pretty much their entire school lifespan — through college — if they want to, which a lot of these girls do because they know an education will get them further away from the poverty that they grew up with.”  But making the pads was going to be a challenge. Christina said she was, by no means, a professional seamstress. She wasn’t sure where to begin and how she’d get the work done.  “We tried to make a prototype in Kenya,” she said, “and it was very, very crude. We came back and there was this lady we know — she was a former home economics teacher at COC (College of the Canyons). She came up to me after watching a promo video of me making this prototype pad — we showed these clips at churches for support — and she says, ‘I can help you with that. I know what to do.’”  Christina Stratton sews reusable sanitary pads earlier this week in the L Squared Valencia office. Katherine Quezada/The Signal Not only did this woman help to elevate the design, but she also had two garages full of fabric that she’d held onto since retiring.  “Her daughters told her, ‘Get rid of the fabric. You’ll never use it,’” David said. “And she kept saying, ‘No, God has a use for this fabric.’ And now her daughters see that she was right.”  To David and Christina, what they’re doing with L Squared is what has been passed down to them from their families. Both husband and wife are from the Santa Clarita Valley. David attended Santa Clarita Christian School and Christina went to Saugus High School. Both grew up helping others who were less fortunate.  “My family — they started doing foster care when I was 5,” Christina said. “And then it transitioned to helping drug-addict children, where the mother was taking heroin all through her pregnancy and the child was born heroin-dependent. That’s what my family did for 20 years, and that’s what really pushed me into wanting to help children. It’s a soft spot for me.”  David said his family had been lending a hand to the homeless for as far back as he can remember. They’d go down to Skid Row and help those in need. To him, it was never just about giving money or donations. It was and still is about doing the work.  “People are like, ‘Why a project like this? We can just donate,’” he said, referring to what L Squared is doing. “Well, your kids won’t understand if you just donate. It’s important — especially to children — that families model caring and helping people in need. It’s about legacy, which is another ‘L’ of L Squared.”  David explained the name “L Squared.” The four L’s include love, life, loyalty and legacy. Legacy is what he wants to leave behind.  “It’s about having an impact,” he said. “It’s about passing it down and also leaving the world better than we found it.”  Other projects L Squared is doing in Kenyan schools include further developing land on school properties by planting crops and farming (they’ve grown enough food to provide upwards of 100,000 meals); they’ve created self-sustainable feeding programs, and they’ve built up sanitary kitchens, teaching the people how to hygienically prepare food.  Two students work on L Squared-created vertical gardens in March of 2024 in Narok South, Kenya. Each garden holds over 100 seedlings and provides sustainable vegetables to the school on just a few gallons a week. Photo courtesy of L Squared And even though L Squared has donated over 40-plus tons of food to many communities in Kenya, their ultimate goal is to help put systems in place, to teach and to empower the people there to use those systems so they can thrive on their own.  “If they don’t buy in, they won’t thrive,” David said. “So, yeah, they’re eating, yes. They’re not being sold. But is that what you want for your kids? I think that’s more of a bare minimum.”  In addition to helping these communities become self-sustainable, L Squared is also building up sports programs, constructing soccer fields and basketball courts, creating choir programs and other skill-development programs.   “That’s where they’re going to thrive,” David said. “Kids are finding what they’re good at. You can’t do that when you’re in that survival mentality.”  And so, each time L Squared goes to Kenya, which is about two to three times a year, they bring specialized people to push the people in these communities to thrive. They want, for example, athletes to teach the kids how to play sports and teachers to elevate the children’s curriculum.  David Stratton and others from L Squared are providing maize flour to students over the summer in Narok South, Kenya. The student with Stratton holds a new soccer ball from L Squared, which replaced a ball made of rubber bands. Photo courtesy of L Squared L Squared has many partners who support what they do, including churches, businesses and private donors. According to David, the group relies heavily on monthly contributors and is continuously looking for more monthly donors. Much of that kind of support comes by way of word of mouth and the website at L2Squared.org.   Additionally, about every other week, L Squared does volunteer nights — usually, but not always, between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. on the first and third Thursdays of the month at their offices — where people can donate their time to assist in making the reusable pads.   Overall, what L Squared is doing has been paying off, they say. Since going in and working with these communities, there’s been a noticeable difference.  “Every school that we partner with — their attendance has gone up 30%,” David said. “We’re talking about schools that have 200, 800, 900 kids.”  Additionally, he said, the kids are playing sports and they’re getting better grades. And they’re graduating from elementary school, going to high school, and they’re encouraged to go to college.  David Stratton holds jewelry given to him and his wife, Christina Stratton, earlier this week in the L Squared Valencia office. People in Kenya gave the treasures to them as a thank-you for their assistance. Katherine Quezada/The Signal The first time the L Squared team went to Kenya to drop off pads to young girls from the Precious Pads Project, they asked schools to round up those girls who needed help the most. They got 50 of them in one place.  “I sat and I explained to them,” Christina said, “what these pads were, how they were different from disposable ones, how to wash them, how to clean and sanitize them. A lot of these girls started crying. They were crying. They were crying because they said this ensures they’ll be able to go to college. It’s something as simple as sanitary products.”  David added that they’ve received that kind of response each time. That, he said, is what’s making the difference. That newfound desire is what’s making them thrive.  Know any unsung heroes or people in the SCV with an interesting life story to tell? Email [email protected].  The post Faces of the SCV: Husband and wife lead group to help Kenyan communities  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.