By Amina Evangelista Swanepoel | Executive Director, Roots of Health
Thank you so much for your continued interest and support in our project Stop the Sale of Badjao Girls. We have not yet reached our funding goal so this project has not been implemented but we have been using this time to strengthen our programming and find other ways to reach vulnerable girls to empower them about their bodies and their health.
In July, we held an education session with a group of young people within a Badjao community in a seaside slum called Bagong Silang. We held the workshop with around 30 young people, the majority of them teenage girls who already have at least one baby. We taught the young people about reproductive health and how contraception works. We then gave the girls, some of whom were there with their partners, the opportunity to get free contraceptives from us if they wished to plan the spacing of their future children.
Many of the girls in our session had been forced to stop formal schooling when they became pregnant. Several girls expressed their joy at being in a learning environment again, and some girls said they wish they had learned what we taught them before they had their first baby.
We hope to continue implementing more small group sessions like this one until this project can be fully funded. Thank you once again for your support!
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