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More innovation needed to protect the girl-child: a focus on rural empowerment
Chipo Chigumira , Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness (WIDSAA)
Extracted from GAD Exchange Issue 33
July 05, 2004

http://www.sardc.net/Widsaa/Gad/Iss33/girlchild.htm

Southern African countries need innovative measures to address the increasing challenges hindering the protection of the girl-child in the region’s rural areas..

The girl-child in southern Africa is faced with many challenges, which include poverty, effects of HIV and AIDS, dropping out of school, commercial sex work and child abuse.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action BPFA) mandates governments and states to eliminate all forms of discrimination and abuses against the girl-child, and to ensure that girls enjoy their rights in totality.

In the Southern African Development Community SADC), six countries (Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia and Zambia) have identified issues affecting the girl-child as a priority. However, the region still has insufficient innovative programmes to effectively deal with the challenges of girls in rural communities including those out of the formal education systems and organised groups.

The Girl Child Network Trust (GCNT) in Zimbabwe is an example of an innovative approach to addressing the rights of girls in peri-urban and rural communities, which can be replicated in other countries in the region.

Established in 1999, the GCNT is a community-based organisation that provides girls in formal and non-formal groups with survival skills including self-empowerment awareness, sensitisation on HIV and AIDS, child abuse and where to seek protection.

The approach taken by many organisations in the region is that of addressing girl-child issues through formal groups in schools and through youth clubs, thereby leaving the majority of girls who are not in school or do not belong to any organised group not catered for.

The non-existence of organisations with specific focus on the rural girl-child outside the formal socio-circles motivated GCNT to establish a Girls’ Empowerment Village near Rusape, in a communal area in the eastern part of Zimbabwe. The empowerment village, which was established in 2002, has been providing services to rural girls, and especially the ones who are out of school.

Besides operating as a platform where various selfempowerment and survival skills are offered to girls below the age of 16, the Empowerment Village also serves as a safe home where abused girls seek help.

"Information volunteers at the village assess each girl’s situation and needs and identify resources that are affordable, accessible and geographically convenient," explains GCNT Director and founder member, Betty Makoni.

She added that her organisation considers empowerment as the process of providing, facilitating and instilling the means of addressing issues which impede the full growth and development of the girl-child in all spheres of life. The organisation makes an effort to provide useful information to enable girls to help themselves.

As a result of their programmes in the village, the number of girls who are aware of their rights has increased and more are visiting the empowerment village to report cases of abuse and seeking help.

Girls who have been idling in the rural community are also using their earned entrepreneurial skills to start income-generating activities, while those who left school due to pregnancies have been motivated by the selfawareness sensitisation to return to school.

Based on the successes with the Rusape Girls Empowerment Village, GCNT has started working towards replicating the approach in other rural areas. The GCNT officials maintain that the need for rural girls to embrace empowerment as a tool towards complete freedom now and in future is inevitable.

The innovative approach in addressing the issues affecting the rural girl-child undertaken by the GCNT is a best practice that other countries in southern Africa can emulate. Activities of the GCNT are also undertaken in one rural high-density suburb, Chitungwiza, where 100 clubs with an estimated membership of 10,000 girls have been established.

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