The Forum for African Women Educationists Kenya (FAWE) has launched an ambitious programme that seeks to contain teen pregnancies and promote girl child education in Garissa County.
The Imarisha Msichana Programme, will involve school going children, bodaboda operators, teachers and religious leaders and will see sustained campaigns in all parts of the county on the rights of girl child and the need to stop early marriages.
Garissa Township Deputy county commissioner Solomon Chesut urged the team to speak out against early marriages and teen sex in the societies especially for the vulnerable girls.
“I urge you, as you go out to the villages to spread this message, let us help our girls achieve their dreams in life whether through education, in business or any other projects they want to do in our society,” said Chesut.
“There is a common saying that if you educate a girl child, you educate a whole nation. If we fail to educate our girls, we are failing our country,” he added.
Garissa county CEC for Gender Hawa Abdi Sahal urged the team to also be ambassadors against sexual and gender based violence especially against school going children.
Hawa said it is time to stop the ‘rape culture’ in the county, and tasked the bodaboda riders to lead the campaigns and guard their name from a few crooked elements within the sector.
“If you see any form of sexual abuse in schools or in the villages and you report it to the relevant authorities and action is taken, you are keeping the community safe,” Hawa said.
“We also need to tell our societies to stop blaming the victims of Gender Based Violence. Stigmatization our girls whose rights have been violated and impregnated is not good, it makes some of them stop even schooling. We need to support them and not to rebuke them for the bad things that happened to them,” she added.
