Educating Girls in Malawi
The Australian AIDS Fund has embarked on a new education initiative in Malawi...to provide boarding school facilities for girls.
It has already partnered Searchlight Orphan Care (see below) to accommodate 65 girls at our Australian Secondary School at Kambona.....and is now engaged in providing similar facilities for our Australian Secondary School at Nogwe, to cater for 50 girls there. The initiative has already attracted the commendation of Cheryl Gregory Faye, the Senior Education Advisor, the Head of the UNGEI Secretariat of UNICEF in New York "You seem to be doing some great work, for the smallest AIDS-care charity in Australia! Bravo on the important contribution you're making to girls'education in Malawi."
This is especially to cater for those girls living in remote areas where there is no electrcal power...and thus no electric light...and where, otherwise, the girls get caught up in a host of domestic works that keep them away ftom school.
Read about UNGEI - The United Nations Girls' Education Initiative which we applaud and support.
Click here
News Update: October,05 2009
Work is now well on with the construction of the 50-bed girls boarding facility and the associated facilities that are part of the new project underway at The ProgressiveAustralian Academy at Nogwe.
News Update: July 24, 2009
The new two-building facility that'll house some 65 girls at Kambona is now complete and will be ready for the girls to occupy at the start of the new term in August. It's been warmly welcomed by parents and students alike!
The construction of the new boarding school facility has also meant that the water supply storageservice has had to be significantly upgraded...doubled in fact! That's meant bringing in a new storage tank from over 50 miles away and providing it with a solid base to stand upon.
Earlier News Update: 26/04/2009
Building is already well advanced, with the construction of the large buildings...each the size of classrom blocks and each containing two rooms.
The first is almost completed and has been roofed.
The second still needs to be roofed, plastered, plastered, painted and provided with flooring.
The boarding school facility will cater for 60 girls.
Nearby, the SOC (Searchlight Orphan Care) has also built a small nursery school, which also acts as a local feeding centre.
The government of Malawi introduced free primary education some 12 years ago, becoming one of the first African countries to do so.
BUT.......Girls remain woefully outnumbered in African schools. They make up nearly 60 percent of the children who should be in school but in fact don't attend. Part of the problem is economic, but much of the reason remains rooted in societies that undervalue girls and, in some cases, abuse them. These problems are prevalent in Malawi, but there's progress as well due to UN initiatives, such as:-
UNGEI...The United Nations Girls' Education Initiative
Malawi: Newsline
Life-skills education for girls helps end the cycle of abuse in Malawi
©UNICEF/2007/ Sevenier
Catherine, pictured here with her son, ended a cycle of abuse and returned to school after receiving life-skills education and community encouragment.
By Gaelle Sevenier
LILONGWE, Malawi, 22 February 2008 – At the age of 14, Catherine accidentally became pregnant, so she dropped out of school and married the father. From that moment on, the young mother’s life was filled with emotional and physical abuse. Her husband started beating her on a daily basis and sometimes would not give her any food to eat for two or three days.
It was in school, during a UNICEF-supported life-skills education programme, that she learned the violence she was enduring was not acceptable.
Life-skills curriculum
"School is a useful place to communicate about problems," said the Chief of Education for UNICEF Malawi, Simon Mphisa. "Therefore, within school programmes, we have developed a curriculum with simple messages and knowledge about the human body, sexual behaviour, violence or exploitation."
UNICEF-supported life-skills education programmes reach 5,168 schools in Malawi and about 2.5 million primary school children.
Keeping girls in school
Forty per cent of marriages in Malawi involve children from 15 to 18 years of age. Girls often drop out of school to get married or to go to work. In 2003, an Accelerated Girls’ Education Initiative was launched to look at ways of not only getting girls enrolled in school, but making sure they finish their education.
As part of a special programme, the World Food Programme, in partnership with UNICEF, donates an extra portion of food to girl students each month so that they can bring corn back to their homes.
In approximately 250 Malawian schools, children are given a plate full of nutritious porridge every morning. With the main goal of maintaining girls in schools, the programme also helps to reduce absenteeism and increase enrolment in the targeted schools.
|
