Boys and Men Alliance Project

It is now winter in the rural district of Zambia where we work, which has meant that the temperatures are much cooler and it makes it easier to hold large scale community meetings. In the peak summer months it is not uncommon for temperatures to reach above 40C, which understandably can often prevent people from travelling to meetings. 

Our work in girls education has never been more important, as we write this report Zambia has entered the worst drought on records and certainly in 100 years. We know from previous droughts that cases of child marriage spike, as families often are forced to marry off girls as a way to reduce hunger in the household. Knowing of this increased risk the School Club Zambia has held 4 large scale community meetings this month with boys and men in our communties. 

Mweembe, School Club Zambia's Programme Officer who has been overseeing the Boys and Men Alliance communtiy meetings said "We have noticed that the turnout has continued to increase since we first started these workshops over a year a go. It was hard at the begining to convince men to value the education of women, especially some husbands who believed that if their young wives went back school that their home life would suffer".

The Boys and Men Alliance Project was developed to help our girls football league to reach its target of returning 80% of particpants back into school. We are so proud to announce that 89% of particpants from this year's league are now back in education, which gives us a total of 445 girls over the last 3 years!

A huge thank you to everyone that continues to support this cruical work as the need remains as urgent as ever. 

Please visit our social media pages for more regular updates and photos from this important project.