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Report on UNGEI Panel at the Women Deliver Conference
Betty Makoni, Girl Child Network (GCN)
October 18, 2007

http://www.ungei.org/infobycountry/247_1587.html

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Brief Background about the Woman Deliver Conference

The Women Deliver Conference took place in the United Kingdom, London Excel from 18-20 October 2007. Maternal mortality reduction was the theme of the conference which was jointly organized by UNGEI Global Advisory Committee members DFID, Norad, CIDA, UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Bank.

One of the main features of the conference which this report will make major highlights on was the UNGEI panel on girls education. The panel had a number of speakers drawn from Girl Child Network, Popular Radio girls awareness programme from Nepal, ASPBAE and Forum for African Women Educationists from Uganda.

A number of exhibitions were present at the conference and this exposed participants to latest researches on maternal health issues. The UNGEI Panel focused on the heart of the conference- girls' education, early childhood development; cultural, institutional and economic barriers preventing girls from attaining education, gender-based and sexual violence in and around schools, access to education for the most vulnerable girls, education in crisis and post crisis situations, and quality and partnerships for girls' education. A lot of documentary films were produced. What struck the Director of GCN, Betty Makoni was the number of film productions on maternal mortality from countries like Ethiopia. Most of the documentaries presented some best practices on reduction of maternal mortality but of course none focused on girls' education as a leveraging strategy.

GCN Director attended the conference after she received an invitation from the UNGEI secretariat based in New York. In particular her presentation would focus on empowerment of girls and eradicating abuse in homes, schools and communities.

The UNGEI Panel

UNICEF Deputy Executive Director, Kul Gautam moderated the panel after a general introduction and overview of the panel by Cherly Gregory Faye the head of UNGEI based at the Headquarters in New York. Kul Gautum first acknowledged participants to the panel whose time and presence he greatly appreciated as the participants were genuine and wholly committed to girls' education given the fact that they chose to attend this panel which offered one of the very basic solutions to maternal mortality reduction. Notably he highlighted the importance of investing in girls' education as one way of investing in women and consequently maternal mortality reduction.

The panelists in order of their presentations

Each panelist presented for 10 to 15minutes.

Dr Nitiya Rao - made a presentation of many models in Asia which are working in partnerships to advocate for girls' education. She highlighted the importance of collective lobbying in education and what impact this brings to most vulnerable marginalized groups.

Betty Makoni, Executive Director of Girl Child Network focused on empowering the Girl Child. She presented GCN as an Empowerment model that addresses abuse in the home , school and community. GCN is modeled on her personal experiences as a girl who pulled through education despite barriers like all forms of abuse. The model has impacted on many girls lives in Zimbabwe and continues to score a first in promoting girls education through a rights based approach

Binita Shrestha - made a presentation on how a popular radio show from Nepal educates and mobilizes girls. This model demonstrated the role of media in education for girls and focused on participatory methods used in girls education

Dr Codou Diaw - Executive Director of the Forum for African Women Educationists presented on girls education and policy formulation. Most importantly was the way in which she highlighted strategies that could be put in place based on the success of FAWE project to make such policies work. FAWE emphasized that policy should shift from primary to Secondary education.

(All the power points are detailed on www.ungei.org).

This panel was attended by donors, members of parliament from various countries, UNICEF country Representatives for example from Mali, various international organizations like Global Health Counsel of Ireland amongst many others.

UNGEI Panel - Areas for follow up

After the four presentations the moderator, UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Kul Gautum opened the floor to the participants for comments and questions. The comments and questions are worth following up maybe with UNGEI secretariat, panelists and UNICEF country representatives and funding partners as well as implementing partners.'The issues raised were not so new .What was new were the new strategies to be put in place

The participants generally came to a consensus that:

  • This panel obviously was the most important panel at the Women Deliver Conference as it highlighted the importance of investing in girls education as a leveraging strategy in maternal mortality reduction. Obviously there was a general consensus that future conferences should focus on investing in girls education.
  • The whole notion of women empowerment was interrogated and it was generally agreed that empowerment should start at preschool and primary school and should be instilled when girls are still young.
  • One woman from Nigeria said rape is common and how best can gender based violence be addressed at school level. She emphasized the need to urgently address sexual abuse of girls in African schools
  • The quality of free education has to be examined. In most developing countries education is said to be free at primary level but children are without resources like teachers, books, stationery and food. A question was posed, "Can education be free with no resources"?
  • In Nepal, organizations have stopped giving money to fathers as they misuse it and take it for beer drinking. Education assistance is now being channeled through the mothers.
  • Almost all researches, findings and strategies on girls education have to come up with a general framework and from the presentations one participant asked what the way forward would be to solve the problems around girls education.
  • One participant was more concerned about classifying girls according to their vulnerability and then prioritizing education for marginalized girls more than girls from well to do families.
  • One participant who had just returned from Zimbabwe and runs a private foundation was concerned about how much we are asking a child to do: education, child labor, income generating projects etc.

Conclusion

Local, Regional and International Networking after Women Deliver Conference

The participants, UNGEI and the panelists all were of the view that there ought to be strong networking partnerships to respond to the many issues participants had raised. For instance how could one possibly respond to a plight of a girl who is for example 15years old, orphaned, widowed, pregnant, a child mother and HIV positive. Sometimes we wonder whether our interventions can still address such complexities and whether we should not work with models that present the best practices. It was generally agreed that strategies must first respond to local needs of girls due to the so many complex situations girls find themselves in. The moderator of the panel, Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF Kul Gautum summed up and quoted Betty Makoni of Girl Child Network who asserted that policies are general but situations are particular and so for each situation there ought to be a particular policy and intervention. That way he argued that strategies become more effective given the complexities of girls find themselves .

Safety and security of girls in schools

Prior to the Women Deliver conference, UNGEI had an e-discussion on safety and security in and around schools moderated by Professor Bagele Chilisa from the University of Botswana which fed into the UNGEI panel at the Women Deliver Conference. At local, regional and international levels networking around strategies to combat abuse of girls in schools, improving the physical infrastructure of schools and how to make these girl child friendly are highly recommended. Harmful cultural practices perpetuate the abuse of girls and allow men to pursue younger girls for sex and it is imperative for organizations and government to devise strategies to combat these. Most importantly strategies should be shared around how families, communities, governments and other stakeholders should play to protect girls against abuses, assaults and sexual harassment. Generally all respondents to the e-discussion agreed that schools and their surrounding are unsafe for girls and something ought to be done as a matter of urgency. It is highly recommended that e-discussions and such panels as organized by UNGEI be localized and simple plans of actions be put in place to respond to the plight of girls. World over presentations on what can be done are loud and clear but the problem comes on localizing the global consensus. It is not that difficult for local schools to make schools safe for girls but it has taken this long and this is what is most disturbing.

Follow up action by GCN after UNGEI Panel

Betty Makoni, GCN Founder and Executive Director will first submit a written report to UNICEF Country Representative Dr Festo Kavishe and all UNICEF Heads of Sections for further discussions. The report will be circulated to other NGO's, UN agencies government and funding partners to see areas that Zimbabwe could Follow upon. The 16 days of activism are fast approaching and it is worthwhile for GCN and other local NGO's working with girls as well as UNICEF to take the UNGEI panel presentations to the local communities so as to update them on such crucial global education initiatives for girls.

  • GCN has and will always work closely with UNICEF and the government of Zimbabwe. The GCN empowerment model was rated with a star by some participants at the Women Deliver Conference. GCN has in place a GCN empowerment concept paper of how best GCN could work closely with UNICEF to see successful replication of this model in Zimbabwe.
  • Two UNICEF representatives who met with GCN Director at the Women Deliver Conference strongly recommended that the GCN model be widely shared as it is greatly inspirational as this is an empowerment experiential model for girls that has proved to be most effective as there is a holistic approach to the empowerment and development of the girl child.
  • GCN will continue to partner with UNICEF Zimbabwe as GCN has been funded in one project in 2005 and hopes to continue receiving both financial and moral support from UNICEF and to see how best the GCN model can best be replicated in Zimbabwe as a way to ensure millions of girls in vulnerable situations benefit from the model. There have been previous attempts in Zimbabwe to replicate the Girl Child Network model.
  • GCN and maybe other panelists impressed at the Women Deliver conference and so have been invited to make presentations on International Women's Day on 8 March in Ireland by the Chair of the Global Women Health Council. Subsequent meetings will be held with various advocacy groups in Ireland as a way to raise awareness on girls' education and health. Such follow up roll out of the Girl Child Empowerment model has far reaching benefits for the panelists and their organizations as well as UNGEI as more and more supporters globally take girls education as a basis for solving many challenges befalling women at a later stage.
  • There are so many opportunities for networking for all panelists for the UNGEI panel and a follow up panel on local, regional and international networking need to be organized.
  • Sometimes when all has been said what is left is all to be put in action

Special Note
Betty Makoni greatly appreciates great work by UNICEF Zimbabwe who facilitated her travel to the Women Deliver Conference.GCN greatly appreciates work by UNGEI head of secretariat Cherly Gregory and her team as they work hard to bring all players in girls education to unite and work towards a common goal.

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