Empower a Girl in the Congo

Behavior change communication is a major focus of International Medical Corps’ work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Deep rooted community change is still required  to prevent, address and overcome gender-based violence and International Medical Corps is making progress towards initiating that change. The following is just one example of our efforts.

“My name is Justin. I have been the principal at the Bitobolo Institute since 2006. Institute of Bitobolo is a religious affiliated school. According to the policies, it is strictly forbidden to accept a girl who is pregnant or has a child. This has been the practice since its inception in 1991. I have witnessed change ever since International Medical Corps established a school club and started sensitizing teachers and students on Gender Based Violence (GBV). During the school year 2013-2014, the project helped the school management to revise the code of conduct for teachers to strengthen prevention and protection of students against sexual violence. As the first line authority of the establishment, I strived to popularize this new code of conduct among teachers to ensure strict compliance.

I was concerned about the issue of teenage mothers and the fact that the school was discriminating against them. For some, the pregnancy was a result of rape or early/forced marriage. This was GBV and we were denying them opportunities just because they were girls. I made the decision to mobilize other colleagues to advocate with the school in Bukavu which is responsible for policy formulation and review to change the policy that was discriminating against teenage mothers. We were lucky that the school in Bukavu had also benefitted from similar activities and had been inaugurated as a gender friendly school. We got verbal approval to start enrolling teenage mothers in the school. We are currently organizing meetings with the student-parent committees to encourage girls to enroll in school. Since then four teenage mothers who had been refused to continue school in 2011 are newly enrolled and are attending classes. The enrollment of girls in the school has increased from 17% of the 150 students and now we have 80 girls (53%) enrolled in the school. I have also seen a reduction in the cases of GBV in the school. During the 2011-2012 school year, we had five cases of sexual assault by teachers and classmates. However, after the establishment of the code of conduct, I have not heard any cases reported.

I am very happy for these improvements and I recommend that International Medical Corps intensifies sensitization and involve more schools in the prevention of GBV for the well-being of our community and in particular for the well-being of the girl child.”

With the generous support of GlobalGiving and other donors International Medical Corps is able to institute such initiatives and will be able to continue to implement programs that follow through on Justin, and many others’ desire for change in their community.