| A Girl's Journey |
|
Families consider it wiser to send the boys to school and for further education and keep the girls at home to look after the house and the children, the sick, the animals, carry the water and the firewood.Some girls do not get the opportunity to attend or complete primary education. Those who do still may face difficulties to read and write Swahili because at home they have no time to study as their work never ends.
Many girls become pregnant at a young age and early marriage is common. As some girl’s level of education is low, so also is her understanding of her own physical development and her reproduction system. Reproductive health is taught only at Secondary School level. But many girls do not have the opportunity to access this level of education and so are at risk of HIV due to wrong or incomplete information on prevention. Many girls who enter the job market are poorly educated so the only work they can do is waitressing or housekeeping, which is poorly paid.
The temptation to become involved in transactional sex to raise some more money is seen as an easy shortcut. The position of girls in society is generally lower than boys. Violence to girls and women is common. Even at school, girls are often abused by the teachers who misuse their role and girls frequently do not know their rights.
The hopelessness in which many girls are entrapped causes them to loose complete sight of any other future, accepting their lot as normal - early marriage, childhood pregnancy, sex worker, and abuse by the men in their lives. Recognizing the situation of girls is critical in responding to the AIDS Pandemic and the approach that APA is promoting in the Bagamoyo District has Gender Empowerment at its heart, as its goal and in all its daily activities: ….. Girls are the exclusive beneficiaries of the educational revolving fund programme for access to technical and third level education and the girls are selected on the basis of academic eligibility but having the least economic opportunity. The loans are repaid when they finish their education and commence work and this provides funding for another girls education.
Girls and women are the only ones eligible to access The Income Generating Revolving Fund scheme. Girls selected from their villages are from among those with few resources but potential and willingness to repay the loans [maximum €300=] commencing after a 3-month grace period. The women selected from their villages by the respective committees are those who have lost husbands and are caring for their own or their grandchildren and who have fewest resources but willing to repay their loan [maximum is €300=] commencing after 3 months grace period. These women are the heroes of Africa - women who are caring not only for their own but frequently for their grandchildren, struggling to keep them together in a normal, loving family and community context, providing educational opportunity and preventing drifting onto streets, into prostitution and exploitation.
It is through these that the really most vulnerable children can be reached. As loans are repaid other girls and women join the scheme immediately. To raise the status, the dignity, to build the self confidence of the girls and women, the girls and women who are selected to join these schemes receive training on HIV/AIDS and peer education and those on the income generating scheme, receive 10 days training in business skills, management of the revolving fund themselves and the formation and running of their own Association
Click here to return to Aids in Africa page
|
A girl growing up in Bagamoyo District of Tanzania sets out on a journey strewn with difficulties. From the outset, she is not considered on the same level as her brothers.
With little access to resources, few opportunities to post primary education and especially to third level, the endless work demands of the family, 
