Girls Academy for Conscious Change

It is with such joy and inspiration that I write to you to share the outcomes of our first Girls Academy for Conscious Change.  With your support, Global Grassroots was able to deliver its core conscious leadership and social entrepreneurship curriculum to 70 vulnerable high school girls over November and December. Of these, 57 girls are Komera Scholars, identified by The Komera Project to receive scholarships and ongoing support so that they may complete their education - vital to their ability to advance their lives out of poverty. The remaining 13 girls were extended a special invitation through a recommendation from Partners in Health.  Many of our participants are the heads of their child-headed households, some are teenage mothers, and others are HIV+.  Yet all were engaged and extremely enthusiastic about becoming change agents to fight issues of importance to them in their communities.  The girls have formed six teams and will be working over the next year to advance the following self-designed solutions:

Brave People

18 Team members

Issue: Street Children

Mission: To reduce the number of street children, ages 8-14, by educating them in performances using songs, plays and poems which mobilize these children to leave their street life, so that we can bring them back to school and to their families.  We will target them where they sleep at night.

Budget:  $572

Invincible

5 Team Members.

Issue: Hunger

Mission: To reduce hunger in Mbarara by increasing productivity by raising domesticated animals that will provide fertilizers, and by training people on how to use fertilizers; so that we can improve the fertility of the soil in our community. We are planning to provide pigs to four families in Mbarara so that they can have fertilizer for their land. We will also train them on watering plants, so that they can improve the productivity, and teach them to use anti-erosion techniques while cultivating. After a year, the offspring of these pigs will be given to 10 more families.

Budget:  $241

New Life

17 Members

Issue: Overpopulation

Mission: To fight overpopulation by providing 400 people with trainings on family planning, performing educational plays, songs and poems that show the public the bad effects of overpopulation and mobilizing people to use family planning.  Overpopulation is mainly caused by the fact that people don’t use family planning and as a result, they end up by giving birth to children they cannot afford to feed. This brings poverty in that family. These families aren’t able to pay health insurance, and they cannot afford to pay school fees for their children. As a consequence, instead of going to school children become street children or prostitutes, which makes our community less progressive. 

Budget: Under development

Hard Workers

9 Members

Issue:  Violence Against Women and Girls

Mission: To reduce poverty among women and girls in our community by fighting their lack of self-confidence.  We will provide 30 women with trainings about using their assets like embroidering, and waving basket, etc. and train them in doing small income generating projects that do not require a big investment.  We believe that women and girls who are poor will not be vulnerable to abusive relationships and cannot turn to bad professions such as prostitution to look for money if they are self-confident and have leaned skills like waving baskets.

Budget: $240

Step Forward

9 Members

Issue: Child Abuse

Mission: To reduce domestic violence faced by children, ages 7-20, by conducting trainings among 300 parents in the villages of Mukoyoyo, so that we can reduce the ignorance of child rights.  We want to see children going back to school among those who dropped out of school.  Also, for those children who are overworked (which means that children do a lot of work beyond their strength) we want to see that they are no longer overworked, and that children receive health insurance. We want to see that people who abuse children’s rights are punished seriously, and we will be reporting them to local leaders in charge

Budget: $400

Withstand

12 Members

Issue: Lack of day care centers that result in children under age 7 playing on the streets and getting into accidents

Mission: To solve the problem of lack of day care centers by training parents and local leaders about the importance of these centers, and to build and register pre-school aged children in those centers.

Budget: under development

We extend our deepest gratitude for your support which will enable these 70 young women to have a successful experience creating positive change in their communities.  We will be monitoring these teams over the next year and will be evaluating the impact of this program on their self-confidence, self-awareness, social-emotional learning, leadership skills, problem-solving capacity, academic performance, trauma healing and engagement with others, as well as their social impact in their communities.  We look forward to keeping you updated on their progress and encourage you to continue to support this partnership between Global Grassroots and The Komera Project for the benefit of vulnerable girls becoming self-aware community leaders.

With wishes to you and your families for a happy, healthy and meaningful New Year.