According to a survey published in 2024, half of all Zambian women have experienced physical, emotional or sexual violence. Nearly 3 in 10 young women in Zambia are married before their 18th birthday, and about 5% are married before 15.
A wave of nonprofits has emerged in response to this crisis. Among them is the Sistah Sistah Foundation, which supports vulnerable girls through safe spaces, mentorship and advocacy for robust national protections against gender-based violence.
Ann Kazhing’a Holland, who founded the organisation, traces her lifelong activism to her upbringing by her mother and grandmother—both only daughters who were fiercely protected by their brothers.
“I grew up in a very matriarchal family,” she says. She recalls how her grandmother’s brother refused to let her return to her abusive marriage.
Holland attended a missionary-run institution built to rescue girls from child marriages. This was her first close encounter with inequality. “60% of the girls were on scholarship,” she recalls, with most arriving with “a small bottle of juice, lotion, maybe biscuits.”
Despite being teenage girls, many had no menstrual pads—those from surrounding villages couldn’t afford to buy them.
In her 10th grade, as a dorm prefect, Holland noticed that only eight out of the thirty girls in her care had pads. Along with her friends, she kickstarted a small drive to get pads for the disadvantaged girls.
Rooted in Zambian patriarchy
Years later, Holland would connect these inequalities with Zambia’s patriarchal structures. Leadership roles were mostly reserved for men. Women who sought the same offices were met with higher standards. Across the country, political parties welcomed women only as voters, not as candidates.
After opting against a career in medicine, she dabbled in courses related to gender, a field that resonated with her. Volunteering with several organisations, she encountered scores of girls—barely 11 years old—who revealed sexual relationships with older men. Too often, the adult facilitators that worked alongside her shamed the girls or threatened them with moral punishment.
“If you’ve worked with kids, you know that it’s so hard for teenagers to open up to adults. And when they open up, the first thing they don’t want to hear is you reprimanding them or punishing them,” she explains.
Once she heard a depressing case involving a 13-year-old girl who had been assaulted by a 30-year-old man. Community members blamed the child, labelling her “fast” and disrespectful, while excusing the adult man. Holland was horrified.
Cultivating trust and safe spaces
Unable to accept how sexual exploitation had been reframed as a moral failing, she founded the Sistah Sistah Foundation in 2018—at just 22.
The name was inspired in part by the Big Brother/Big Sister model she had seen abroad. But this was distinctly targeted at Zambian girls experiencing abuse, exploitation or simply lacking guidance.
The foundation’s flagship project took place at an orphanage in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital. Building on her prior experiences, she avoided instilling the girls with shame or guilt.
Instead, she created an atmosphere where the girls could speak openly and seek help without feeling judged. At times when she heard stories that made her chest tighten, Holland caught herself, affirming. “I would never shame them.”
As she welcomed the girls, she tended to some of their basic needs, such as menstrual pads. Many, she discovered, didn’t understand menstruation and couldn’t use pads, so she set up “period parties.”
These events featured red-themed décor and red velvet cake, including menstrual kits filled with soap, underwear, shaving kits and everything the girls requested.
The foundation’s annual feminist festival, which requires attendants to donate a pad as an entry fee, ensures a steady supply for girls in low-income communities.
As survivors of sexual abuse, emotional needs began to surface, too. Holland responded with what became her most innovative programme: a healing module that blends group therapy with creative practices like art, dance, creative writing and yoga. In the absence of therapy, this provided some closure to the girls.
For periods spanning three to six months, she and her team of volunteers taught the girls how to use movement, storytelling and music to process trauma, manage anxiety and curate similar safe spaces with their peers.
For all its progress, the foundation was taking a personal toll. She and other community members funded many of the projects. They soon saw the need for formal recognition.
Still in 2018, Holland registered the NGO, which opened up a smorgasbord of opportunities and partnerships. It also established a professional structure that included staff, a corporate board, funders and a community.
Currently, the Sistah Sistah Foundation has ten members of staff and a diverse board comprising Africans from Zambia, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and outside the continent.
Alongside gender-based violence and reproductive health rights, the foundation has also begun championing climate change and digital rights.
“We don’t limit ourselves. We work with our community and work in whatever best way we can,” Holland remarks, acknowledging the demand for coding lessons and tech opportunities.
Running an organisation like Sistah Sistah, she says, comes with plenty of pressure from both the staff and the public. “It’s a lot of work, and sometimes you’re stuck in this motion of whose interests do you serve best?”
The criticism from detractors can be jarring: “They said I am running a joke as an activist,” she says.
The work has brought her to tears and demoralised her. But the beauty of building something that is uniquely hers, that she cares deeply about and that transforms lives keeps her going, she says.
Beyond Sistah Sistah, Holland serves on the boards of WGNRR and Tunge, a reproductive-rights organisation and a disability-rights group, respectively.
She also advises groups on reshaping foreign feminist funding in tune with grassroots needs. To strengthen her advocacy, she’s now halfway through a law degree.
She shares one principle that’s guided her actions: do unto others as you want them to do to you.
These days, when she works with teenage girls, she pictures herself at their age and how scolding, punishment and moral advice about staying away from boys would have pushed her further away.
“If parents make sex education a taboo, someone else—usually an abuser—will fill the gap,” she cautions.
Holland believes that children who receive feminist, comprehensive sex education rarely end up pregnant or drop out of school, as many parents fear. For her, Information is protection, and the Sistah Sistah Foundation is determined to deliver that to millions of Zambian girls.
Summary not available at this time.
