Empower and Educate: Malawi Girls' Clubs
After-school groups in Malawi are encouraging girls to stay in school, to get an education and to fulfil their aspirations. Girls like Grace (below, right) can hope to finish school and become a policewoman, or an accountant or a lawyer – and because of these EveryChild supported clubs, her hope does not have to be a dream.
Often life for girls in Malawi does not last long. For some as young as 12 their passage into womanhood comes all too early - marriage in return for a ‘bride price’, or dowry, paid to the family is seen as an acceptable bargain.
Malawi is one of the world’s 15 poorest countries, where over three quarters of the population live on less than $2 a day. For many families selling your daughter is a fair price to pay to supplement that income. Marriage separates the young brides from their families and closes the door on their education - and so the poverty cycle repeats itself. Through the work of EveryChild Malawi some girls are experiencing a different world.
“We wanted to escape peer and parental pressure and talk about the issues which effect girls,” says Grace. Girls join Bulala Girls' Club because they want to continue their education without the pressure from men and within their family to marry.
The club prioritises the girls’ right to education and expression. Now the girls can lobby local chiefs through the group to create change - to ban ‘bride prices’ for example. They have weekly meetings to talk about issues which matter to girls in the community and talk about ways of resolving them. Before the club was set up issues affecting the girls, such as abuse, would be left unspoken.
'Without the Girls' Club we would be married off and not in school, with no chance to follow our dreams,” says Grace. Grace is Vice President of the club and is clear that she wants to qualify as an accountant before she enters into marriage.
Since the club has started the Bulala community has seen a decline in early marriages and a significant reduction in dropout rates from school.
Fending off early proposals of marriage, 16 year old Teleza (pictured, below) is determined to stay in school, complete her education and fulfil her dream of becoming a police woman. Through the Mndolera Child Rights Club, which informs Teleza and her school mates of their right to education, pupils are encouraged to learn in order to lift themselves out of the poverty they have grown up in.
Teleza is the Chair of her Child Rights Club. She and her friends at the club train peers on issues like the danger of child marriages and child labour.
“I tell those ‘sugar daddies’ to leave me alone because I want to achieve my dreams,” says Teleza.
Click here to see about our work in Malawi.