THE CHILD MOTHERS’ REHABILITATION PROGRAM
In Uganda, many cultures still see the girl child as source of wealth. The girl is seen as property to be sold off or exchange for property in cohabitation. This is very common in Eastern Uganda which is part of our project area. The practice affects the life of the girl child as many of them are not educated and married off as soon as they start menstruating.
Although there is a strict law against child marriages, families are secretly selling off young girls. This is most common among poverty infested families as parents sell off their daughters in exchange for bags of sugar and animals like cows and goats. The child is then left to live a miserable life as the husband in many times is older than the girl and already living a polygamous marriage/cohabiting.
7 out of 10 girls drop out of school because parents don’t want to spend money on the girl child education. Men who produce only girls are not seen as men and face continuous challenges resulting into polygamous marriages in the look for women who can produce boys.
Children who conceive before marriage are treated as a family curse and therefore given inhuman treatment. Punishment includes being chased away from their homes. This is worse where men deny responsibility of the pregnancy, another common practice in Uganda. This leaves the young girls with full responsibility on the pregnancy and thereafter the child.
The girls are in most cases banished from their parents’ home and forced into cohabiting. This explains why many child mothers are staying with their extended families like grandmothers, aunties or uncles.
The SnapiZera Intervention
- Skills Training
We train the child mothers with Vocational skills that can help them improve their livelihoods. These skills prepare the child-mother to start small enterprises like tailoring, bakery and pastries, hair dressing among others through which they get an income to look after their babies. We believe that empowering mothers translates in transformation and national development.
We are proposing a Vocational Skills centre in Iganga where more girls will be trained using a Technical, Vocational Education Training (TVET) system.
- Continuous formal Education
Supporting girls to go back and stay in school is very critical in enabling them to acquire necessary academic qualifications. Through the girl child education campaign, SNAZA continues to advocate with different stakeholders like parents, culturaland civic leaders to address the plight of girls and need to stay in schools to completion.
- Psycho-social Support
Given the stigma associated with this “unwanted pregnancy” the affected girls are taken through counseling to not only give them the necessary information they need to carry through the term of pregnancy but also to give to them the emotional and psychological support. Families of the child-mothers are also educated and support to accept taking their responsibility of caringand providing the child mothers in raising their babies and pursuing their life goals. This is done by volunteers some of whom are trained midwives and social workers.
- Financial Literacy and parenting skills
We train the child mothers to ensure that they gain necessary confidence that can help them face the challenges with minimum external financial support. The finance literacy skills help them to acquire basic skills in saving and managing their small income that they get from theirenterprises. We understand that starting a life as a single mother at age 14 is more challenging without parenting skills. Many of such girls are stigmatized and face rejection from the community so we empower them to stand to the social challengesthat may come their way.
- Nutrition and Food Security
This is a major component that is integrated among the skills package that we give to the girls we support. At the skills center, crop production demonstration gardens are setup by the child mothers with technical support from agricultural extension workers attached to the project. After the training, the child mothers go and setup gardens in their respective homes to address their household food nutrition and food security. Also tree plantingis introduced to them and tree seedlingsupplied to them so that in future they can have a source of wood fuel for cooking and possible financial income.
Appropriate technology (using locally available materials) of fuel saving stoves is introduced and promoted in communities where the child mothers live. This helps to lessen the burden of looking for firewood for cooking in homes.
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We give hope to the child Mothers. We restore lives of the child mothers.