Education
Source: MANA Online
Chikwawa, August 4: Low self esteem is said to be amongst the major challenges causing girls to venture into immoral behaviors hence many dropouts in the districts of Salima and Chikwawa.
This was revealed Friday during an exchange visit whereby Chikwawa Community Development Committee (CDC) of Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) visited Salima CDC in order to share experiences on some of the major challenges the two districts are facing, and then learn from each other on how they have managed to achieve their successes.
Among other achievements, Salima CDC has managed to reduce the dropout rate of girls from school from a 58 percent last year to 12 percent this year.
The District Operations Secretariat for CAMFED in Salima Ursula Ngwira said that the major challenge which led to the increase in the number of girls dropping out of school was lack of self esteem which led them to venture into early sex to acquire money hence early pregnancies and marriages.
“We had a big problem as many of our girls were dropping out of school, and after we researched on why this was happening we found out that many of them most had low self esteem and they had no vision about their future, as such they were opting for immoral behaviors as a fast way of getting cash”,
“We therefore trained our mentors, taught them how to council our girls about self realization and self fulfillment and we give sexual reproductive health messages in their respective schools to both girls and boys that is, and through such an initiative we have managed to reduced our dropout rate with a 46 percent”, he indicated.
The acting District Education Manager for Chikwawa Thomas Mbwembwe recommended Salima CDC saying that this was a good initiative and that his district will use it in upholding girl-child education.
“We also sensitize our girls in a way that we just take a few students representatives from our 22 secondary schools, bring them together and teach them about Sexual Reproductive Health”,
“However we realized that it was not that effective and we now feel that the initiative of fully involving all students and stakeholders which was taken by Salima is more effective and we will do the same as our main target is to make sure that all girls finish their education”, Mbwembwe said.
The acting DEM also said that it is significant to focus on building the girls’ self esteem as a way of tackling the mutual major challenge of the two districts which is girls dropping out of school, because they can manage to change their perception and have vision about a bright future.
CAMFED started in Salima in the year 2012 and it has 529 beneficiaries while in Chikwawa district it was implemented in the year 2009 and has 1045 students.