By Saudatu Mohammed | Project Leader
Project Background
In 2020, the world experienced the deadly Corona Virus pandemic which resulted in closure of schools across the globe. In Ghana, schools were closed in early 2020 resulting in lots of school going girls staying home and being exposed to all sorts of dangers, one of which is teenage pregnancy. According to the Ghana Health Service, about 110,000 girls between the ages of 10-19 years became pregnant in 2020 during the lockdown of schools.
As a measure to reduce this damage caused to girls’ education in the country, we at LifeAgain launched the #Empower50TeenMothers2021 campaign in March 2021 to empower at least 50 teenage mothers by supporting them to either go back to school or to learn a skill to aid them get their lives back. We launched this campaign without any funds to implement it. All we had was our passion and faith to create change in the lives of these girls. However through your donation, we raised enough funds to implement our campaign.
Project Update
The team after deliberation decided to reach out to six (6) communities in two districts in the Upper West region. These two districts are the Wa West district and Daffiama Bussie Issa (DBI) district. In the Wa West district, two communities were selected which are Dorimon and Dabo while four communities were selected in DBI which include Fian, Bussie, Wogu and Issa.
Community Entry
Community entry is the first thing we do in our program. This is when we visit the selected communities and meet up with the leaders of the communities including the Assembly men/women, chiefs, Unit Committee members, etc to introduce our program, get to know more about the community from them and start building a relationship that will make our work easier when we start. We also visit the health center of each community to gather data on teenage pregnancy cases in the community to ascertain the prevalence of teenage pregnancy in the community. We started our community entry on 10th June 2021 and ended on 17th June 2021.
Selection of Beneficiaries
This is the next thing we do after our community entry. It usually takes place a week after the community entry. The period of one week is given to the community leaders to inform the community about LifeAgain and put together girls in the community who need our support. During the selection day, we meet up with the girls, introduce the program to them again and then start conducting one-on-one interviews with them to get to know them more and how we can help them. During the interview, we get to know their stories, what they want to do with their lives; if they want to go back to school or learn a skill. After the interviews are over, we select the girls who meet our selection criteria.
We started our selections on 18th June 2021 and ended on 2nd July 2021. We reached out to a total of 80 pregnant girls and teenage mothers. Twenty (20) of them want to go back to school; 15 to Primary and Junior High School and 5 to Senior High School. These girls will be provided with scholarships to enable them return to school to continue with their studies. Ten (10) of them have already completed Senior High School and want to continue to the Tertiary level but we currently do not have the funds to support them at that level. However, we informed them that we will be looking for other opportunities for them. The remaining 50 girls cannot go back to school mostly because they do not have someone to support them with the taking care of their babies thus, they opted for skills training. These 50 girls will be taken through a one-week training on soap making including bar soap, liquid soap, shower gel and powdered soap. After the training, we will give them items to enable them start up their own businesses. We will also give them entrepreneurship training to help them run the businesses well. The soap making trainings are set to begin on 2nd August 2021. We will give you updates on the training and other activities by the end of August.
Story of one of the Selected Girls - Doris
Doris is a 17 years old girl from Bussie. She dropped out from school when she was in JHS 1 due to pregnancy. She could not get anyone to take care of her in school because her parents were both paralyzed in the house. She had to fend for herself after her uncle died. She got involved with a man who promised to support her in school but ended up taking advantage of the situation and got her pregnant in the process. She faced rejection from the man who impregnated her, her friends and society. She has been trying to fend for herself, her parents and the baby through petty trading but it is her dream to go back to school so she can become the nurse she has always dreamt of becoming in order to support her parents and child.
Dori’s story is similar to most of the girls we have selected onto the program to support this year. Without your support and without our work, lots of girls like Doris will have their lives destroyed forever.
Conclusion
The community entry and selection were a success. With the number of girls we have reached out to, we are excited to say we will exceed our campaign promise of supporting 50 teenage mothers. All this was possible because of your generous donation and we will be sharing their exciting progress in the months to come.
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