Safeguarding Education for Young Girls

Diana Shaw

The idea is to get young women and girls to understand their position and value in society. There must be a multi-ministerial approach to solve the issue. Today’s consultation serves also as a springboard for a project that is being supported by the CAMI-Fund. The RISE Girls programme has been taking place in schools and over two hundred and ninety girls will be graduating from the one-year programme. Diana Shaw says that the goal is to develop a national approach that safeguards the education of girls.

Diana Shaw, Executive Director, Child Development Foundation

“It has allowed us to really get an insight on adolescent girls are experiencing in their everyday life, in their environment and what’s happening to them. And what we are finding is that in many cases where girls become pregnant, the pregnancy is actually the end result of a pattern or a series of incidents that have included child sexual abuse, that have included this child being exposed to domestic violence, drug use that have included other social issues that have affected this child. And in many cases when as a school or school management, we are looking at a girl who is pregnant, we are not looking at those deeper issues, those underlying causes and those problems that have brought the girl to this place. And sometimes because of that, our policies may be skewed. They may not be as holistic as they need to be to support recovery and rehabilitation. And then the other challenge is that when we lose the girl from the school system, we are finding that it is much more likely that she will become pregnant again as a teenager; that she will have a second child in her teenage years and that will almost most certainly have her resolve to a life of poverty and her children be caught in a cycle of poverty. So having intervention that promotes the girl being able to go back to school and to continue her education—even if it is not to the same school—but having a national approach that safeguards education is the most important strategy for a national development and that’s what we want to get done.”