Empowering Girls in School

Dear Partner, It is yet another exciting moment to share with you progress that Songtaba is making around empowering girls in schools. During the period under reveiew Songtaba focused attention to monitor the progress of girls who were supported back to school through the re-entry policy. Songtaba continue to work with communities and key duty bearers to adopt strategies on how to expand opportunities for girls education

Songtaba has reached out to 37 teenage mothers in schools to encourage and support their retention and completion of education. Beneficiaries were among 1225 girls mobilized and empowered to lead their own development agenda at the partner schools. Each teenage mother was supported with some basic items tea items and education matreials to ensure their continuous stay in school and hope to improve on performance in school.

The activity is part of Songtaba’s effort to improve girl’s child education in line with Ghana education service re-entry policy. As a national policy in the country, the Ghana education service re-entry unlike other countries is developed to prevent pregnancy among school girls and ensure schoolgirls who get pregnant are given the opportunity to continue their education during pregnancy and after childbirth. The policy recognizes the right of every child to full cycle of basic education. The service seeks to promote universal access, retention, and completion of every child in Ghana.

19 years old Mariam, teenage mother at Bimbilla senior high school as an appreciation for the support had this to say, “The capacity building training from Songtaba has empowered me to gather confidence to pursue my life ambition without been demoralized with early birth. Even though there are few challenges in combining child care and academic work, especially when the child is still bread feeding, but that was should not an obstacles in achieving my life ambition. I therefore appealed to colleagues, not to see disability as inability, I was disabled by the pregnancy but it never affected my ability to go back to school, all thanks and praises be to Songtaba and partners for their continue support to empower girls in schools”

 Generally there has been an increase acceptance to the re-entry policy. Reports from the Ghana Education Service indicate a positive outcome in terms of gender parity and this program is one of the contributory factors to achieving this positive outcomes.