Education

We all should embrace the fact that education is the key that can really shape the world.Therefore I advice every one to try and help uneducated children around your area to get access to adequate education so that we can create a better and less diverse environment for the human race am also participating by doing my best to toch the lives of those that matter .imagine“It costs more to send girls to school because of the additional wraparound costs. A girl going to school will need proper clothing because protecting her decency is very important. This is especially true for secondary school level because schools may be a long distance from home. If she needs to walk for several hours or find local places to stay this makes girls vulnerable to abuse. That’s why many may drop out prematurely.

The need to earn money to support siblings is another factor. You find that girls aren’t missing school because parents don’t want them to be there, it’s because of poverty. In the history of Camfed across the five countries we work in – Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania and Malawi – not one parent has turned down support for their daughter to go to school.

Pregnancy and early marriage is an issue but if you dig deeper to find reasons behind it, they are often poverty-related. In Tanzania, there was an extreme case we came across in one district following a period of drought. Girls living near school had no access to water and were seeking out ‘sugar daddies’ to earn money to buy buckets of water. Girls are being put in positions of risk that sometimes translate to early pregnancy.

Early marriage is often cited – but again the situation is more complex. Girls are not necessarily dropping out to get married – it’s more that the system is pushing them out because it requires a certain level of pass rates to progress from one level of the school to another. If there’s a small window between leaving school and getting married it’s often assumed you’ve left school to get married, whereas for many marriage becomes the only option for future security. That’s why it’s so critical to get right the support systems in school, and the pathways of opportunity beyond school.”