Protection of young girls from pregnancy through vocational skills
Education officer Nelson Ayo claimed that over 90,000 girls under 18 have got pregnant during the Covid-19 period when they were not going to school.
Education Minister Janet Museveni urged parents to guard their daughters. “I will not get tired of reminding you (parents) to always keep an eye on your daughters so that they do not get pregnant during this lockdown,” she said.
This has been the story since the Covid-19 pandemic caused the closure of schools for nearly 2 years. Parents have been very busy trying to make ends meet to feed their families and provide other basic needs.
At Another Hope Children’s Ministries one of our core values is to protect children. We protect children by keeping them engaged with gainful skills. We started efforts of raising funds to help skill the girl child, and we are grateful to you who heard our cry for help.
In early March 2020 as schools were closed, we managed to get some girls both at our children’s home and from the community and trained them with vocational skills such as hairdressing and cosmetology, fashion design and tailoring, cookery, bakery and pastry. The first group had 7 girls, and all of them were awarded with certificates. That was from May to August 2020.
The next group was trained in December 2020, and it had eleven girls. All these were from the community with 9 doing hair dressing, 1 in cookery and 1 in tailoring. Also in 2021 ,we were able to skill another group of 6 girls in April and toward the end of 2021 we managed to skill 8 more girls. Keeping these girls engaged gives them time to focus and at least learn something instead of being idle which would sometimes result into early pregnancies.
With your generosity, we have managed to protect 32 girls from early pregnancies and all this was possible because of your generosity. We are so grateful for your support, and the girls and their parents are also grateful.
May God richly bless each of you and your families.
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A SKILL THAT HAS HELPED SUPPORT MY EDUCATION A skill is the learned ability to perform an action with determined results with good execution often within a given amount of time, energy, or both; especially in the execution of learned physical tasks. In other words, a ‘skill’ is a term that encompasses the knowledge, competencies and abilities to perform operational tasks. Such skills make employees more competent because they are hands on and a person becomes more skilled because of practicing more. Another Hope Children’s Ministries needed to create a difference in Uganda through skills development in children and young adults thus introduced them to courses like Hair Dressing and Cosmetology, Tailoring, Fashion and Design, Carpentry and Joinery among other skills. With a skill, it is always very easy for a person to find something to do; it might not be formal, but can be done even at home. One does not have to put in much capital. In this case, children and young adults are able to work using the skills Another Hope Children’s Ministries has helped impart in them thus being able to support themselves in terms of education. Our children who get a chance to be skilled in holidays are able to buy themselves scholastic materials like school shoes, books, pens, pencils, pocket money among others. BENEFICIARIES Beneficiary A’s story ‘’I am sixteen years old. I was sponsored to learn a skill of Hair Dressing and Cosmetology. This was after the first lock down was lifted in 2020. I got a chance to join a group of other teenage girls. For a full month of training, I learned plaiting a number of hair styles namely; twist, pencil, Rock and dreads. After the training, I started working on clients and I used to charge eight thousand per head due to the fact that I was just starting and needed to get more experience and my own customers. I earned money and saved it which I used to buy scholastic material lie books, school shoes, uniform, pens, pencils, money to buy breakfast while at school and non-scholastic materials like clothes. This saved my mother a lot of money because I had gotten nearly everything I needed to go back to school when schools resumed. She was so happy that this time I was not so demanding like I used to be when school time came. The rest of my young siblings shared some of my materials and our mother added on. Up to now, I still do hair dressing and earn more than I could earn when I had just started.’’ Beneficiary B’s story ‘’I am fifteen years old and I was fourteen years when Another Hope Children’s Ministries saw that there was need to skill the ‘girl child’ during the first lockdown in 2020 due to the fact that young girls were being idle and many got pregnant. I got lucky to be recruited among the first batch that was trained. I was skilled in Hair Dressing and Cosmetology and I learnt quite a number of hair plaiting styles such as Twist, knots, Kiswahili among others. This came as an advantage and after a month, my mother tasked me to start getting clients so that I can work on them which I succeeded in doing. I worked on a number of clients who paid me for the job even when I was earning little money. I saved the little money I could earn and when schools were reopened, I bought myself scholastic materials namely; books, school shoes; among others and my mother did not have to labour a lot in regards to taking me back to school. I am so much appreciative of the opportunity availed to me by my Another Hope Children’s Ministries’’ In conclusion, for the children and young adults who take the skills we train them in serious, they are able to use them even more than the way they expected because we have quite a number of them who feed off a skill, we trained them in. We are so appreciative of our sponsors and donors.
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Gaining a skill at my age is such a blessing and an amazing thing; I can’t thank Another Hope Children’s Ministries (AHCM) and its partners enough for the opportunity given to me. I am 22 years of age. I am a house maid and even before joining the skilling program at AHCM that’s what I was doing for a living so that I could take care of my siblings. Joy filled my heart on knowing that I was going to learn tailoring and fashion design in the skills program for girls and young women at AHCM. In April 2021 I started the program together with other young women, and I opted to take a course in Tailoring and Fashion Design. At the beginning of classes things were quite challenging, more so operating the manual sewing machine, but as time is passing, everything is getting easier and simpler.
For the time spent at the training centre I have learnt a lot of things concerning the tailoring and fashion world. Now I am able to cut and sew different clothes, for example, shirts, skirts, sportswear, dresses and many others. With these skills now I am able to sign contracts with schools to make uniforms for them, and I am working with other individual clients thus boosting my income which was the main reason why I went back to school. Now I can look after my family and take siblings to school.
The skill I am getting has helped me not to take my clothes for mending to tailors, but I work on them on my own which is a great achievement. The climax of this is when I will start up my own tailoring shop that will have my own creative designs and a lot of art work that I have been skilled through at AHCM. With this opportunity my future is bright, and I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Being a tailor and a fashion designer is such fun!!!!
Thank you so much for choosing to support me. May God bless you so much.
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Providing the unemployed with skills is one of the basic solutions to unemployment. Most of the teenage mothers and their children lack basic needs due to poverty caused by lack of skills to be employed or self-employment, neglect by family and society and abandonment by the men who would be fathers to their children. It is essential to ensure that teenage mothers receive adequate social, emotional, medical and academic support for the good of the parent and the child’s future. The ones who don’t get the support make wrong choices like attempting unsafe abortions which can cost them their lives, failure to continue with school forcing them to drop the dreams their future and becoming hopeless and more worse abandoning their babies.
There is always a chance for teenage mothers to rewrite their future and this can effectively happen when supported. We are glad to report that through your support, we have witnessed teenage mothers rewriting their future and having hope restored helping them look beyond their current situation but rather observing them selves as better people and their children as well. We skilled fourteen teenage mothers and we have noticed change in their lives. Some of them have got employed and changed their lives.
New life chapter for Beneficiary A.
The beneficiary is an eighteen year old mother of one boy. Her son is one and half years old and through the skilling program, she has now a new life chapter and a new written future plan for herself and son. The beneficiary registered for the training after she had of the opportunity announced on the teenage mothers Christmas party that took place in 2019 at Another Hope Children’s Ministries.” When I dropped out of school after primary four and went to become a house helper, I didn’t see myself becoming anybody. The only thing I prayed to God was to at least get a man to marry me but this was also shuttered when I was rapped and become pregnant said the beneficiary. To me, becoming pregnant meant this was an end to my life because in my mind I thought no man could ever marry a woman with a child and this is when all my dreams where shuttered and I thought my child will be a no body because I don’t know his father and I didn’t see myself offer him the basic needs of life.
I am glad I joined the skilling program because there is a new me now. I trained in cookery, bakery and pastry and after the training I was given an opportunity to work with Quincy Bites and now I am earning something. Through Another Hope Children’s Ministries, I was supported and got a house to stay in with my son with three months rent fee cleared and some items to start up the home with were issued to me like the beddings. I am now able to earn, sustain my self and my son and save some money as well. I am looking forward to owning a business in the future and having a better financial status which wasn’t the case before. I want to work hard and educate my son. I want him to go further in studies than I did and I will stick to this new future plan I have” said the beneficiary. All this has been possible because of the academic, emotional and physical support got through the skilling young women program. Thanks so much to all of you our friends that have supported us to ensure a better future for the teenage mums and their children .
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Some of the teenage mothers during the training
There are many negative effects associated with being a teenage mum, i.e dropping out of school, being sent away from their parents’ homes and community isolation which exposes them to risks of being dependents, their children lacking enough support and those who go into child marriages face the issue of domestic violence a lot. If these teenage mums are skilled, they get the opportunity of getting into economic dependency which saves them from all those challenges they face once they become teenage mums.
Another Hope Children’s Ministries under the skilling young women project started training teenage mothers in their areas of interest which include: cookery, pastry and bakery (5), hair dressing and cosmetology (9), tailoring and fashion design (1). The training has taken place for three months and fifteen teenage mothers have been training very well in these skills. The training is aiming to empower them to be self-reliant, generate income, and reduce the child abandonment cases since the mothers have skills to generate income for survival in case the fathers refusing to fulfill their obligations.
The fifteen teenage mothers trained for three months are in a position to implement the acquired skill and then earn out of it. Some of the teenage mothers have started making items which they sell and get money. We are so thankful to you our partners for helping to change the lives of these teenage mums and their children.
Achievement
The beneficiary with her son happy about their changed life.
Beneficiary A is eighteen years old with a son whose father she doesn’t know and she has trained in cookery and bakery. The beneficiary is one child to her mother and father. She studied up to primary four and her mother couldn’t take her any further with studies due to lack of funds. She immediately got a job to work as a house helper. Here the head of the family sexually harassed her but because she never had where to stay she couldn’t tell anyone. She later came to Wakiso District at her sister’s residence and she is transformed by the love and care at AHCM through teenage mothers’ programs right from teenage mums Christmas party that AHCM organized for them. Through the period of training, many things concerning life have come across which have helped me change my mindset says beneficiary A. I thought all I needed is a man but now I know I can work for myself and my son. I make cakes and half cakes all these I sell and get some little money for personal use. ‘I am looking forward to raising capital for personal business and look after my son. On behalf of the teenage mothers, thank you so much for the training.
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