Wezi Tjaronda
25 August 2008
Windhoek — The introduction of girls' empowerment clubs at schools has empowered girls not only to excel academically but also prevent teenage pregnancies.
Girls' clubs are platforms that are used to address challenges that hinder the educational development of girls in schools.
Having identified lack of empowerment as one of the contributing factors to the attainment of an education by girls, the clubs were established for use as platforms to discuss issues that hinder girls' academic performance.
Since 2004, when the initiative started, about 16 girls clubs with the motto "No Pregnancy, No Failure" have been established in Kavango, Oshana and Khomas regions.
While decreasing the rate of teenage pregnancies, five best learners from Kavango and Oshana regions are products of the girls' clubs.
While one student from Kavango was the overall winner of a renewable energy project, two other girls from the north travelled to Kenya last month as a result of their excellent performance.
"It has produced good results so far as the best performers are from the clubs," said George Odongo, Forum for African Women Educationalists in Namibia (FAWENA) Gender Programme adviser.
Cecilia Nekwaya, a Grade 11 learner at the Hage Geingob Secondary School who has been part of the club for the last two years, said the forum has empowered them to say no to peer pressure that sometimes leads to sex and teenage pregnancies.
"We have learnt things that we did not know before," she told New Era recently, adding, "The pregnancy rate has decreased. Now we only have two to three cases unlike before," she said.
Nekwaya said girls face a lot of challenges including pressure from boys, too many household chores, and HIV/AIDS and poverty, which many girls do not discuss with their parents or guardians.
Odongo said the clubs also fill in the void left by parents who do not talk to their children about teenage pressures.
"We use drama, song, folk tales to address issues that they consider taboo," he said. Such issues include sex, drugs, teenage pregnancies and abuse.
Programme Officer Kaino Kambala said the clubs have also given the girls a sense of belonging because most girls come from homes where owing to alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other social ills are rife.
"The clubs provide a safety net for the girls to speak out more and counsel each other because sometimes they face similar circumstances," said Kambala.
These are initiatives of the girls themselves who set out to identify their problems, analyse them and find solutions.
Funds permitting, FAWENA would like to roll out the clubs to all schools in the country. In Khomas Region, Hage Geingob and David Bezuidenhout are the only schools with girls empowerment clubs, with the majority (10) in Kavango, where teenage pregnancy problem is high because of culture practices.
FAWENA is a national chapter of the Pan-African Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) whose headquarter is in Nairobi, Kenya. FAWE was born out of discussions of African ministers and funding agencies within the Association for Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), a UNESCO- affiliated forum bringing together all 48 ministries of education in Sub-Saharan Africa and about 44 agencies funding education in Africa in 1992.
Apart from the girls' empowerment clubs, FAWENA's other activities include a girls and boys scholarship programme, All San Girls Conference, Adolescent Reproductive Health & HIV/AIDS, Gender Responsive Pedagogy, Early Childhood Development, Science, Mathematics and Technology Holiday School and a teachers mentoring workshop.
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Hi, how can i join Fawena group with my girls.
Nesley Namibia