Teen Girls Health & Empowerment in Uganda

We have exciting news about our Teen Girls Workshop at Shanti Uganda! The program is getting a facelift with our new Teen Girls Workshop facilitator, Gloria. Gloria has been a midwife at Shanti for four years and is very enthusiastic about taking on this new role. When asked about why she wanted to work more closely with teen girls in Luwero communities Gloria responded, “Young girls go through many changes and they don’t know how to overcome them. The young girls need to value their future. Girls need to be empowered to know that they can survive with what little they may have.”

Gloria will be working with the current Teen Boys & Girls Workshop Intern, Sabrina to revamp the curriculum and ensure the next Teen Girls Workshop is a success. The new curriculum includes an entire day dedicated to sessions about positivity and empowerment with topics such as body image, values and goal setting, building healthy relationships, and positive self-reflection. Throughout my interview with Gloria she consistently insisted, “I didn’t have a workshop like this as a teen but I wish I did because we missed much of this knowledge and skills as a teen.”

In addition to new curriculum, some important aspects of old curriculum are remaining such as the sessions about menstruation and pad making, pregnancy, STIs including HIV/AIDS, and family planning methods (contraceptive methods). Gloria’s goals for the workshop are for girls to gain necessary knowledge such as pad making, socializing, and participating in their communities while increasing their confidence and learning about the value of their future. Gloria emphasized the importance of pad making since girls often miss school during their menstrual cycle because of their lack of access to sanitary products, which greatly impacts their education and their future.

Gloria indicates that education is key to opening up the possibilities for a girl’s future. She explains, “Many girls experience early child marriage and become jobless as a result of lack of education.” The education provided at this workshop will give teen girls the knowledge and skills to have power and agency over their own lives and work towards a brighter future.

As the content of the workshop transforms, so will its teaching methods. Previously the Teen Girls Workshops were conducted mostly through lecture style learning. One of the goals of the new curriculum is to create more participatory learning opportunities for example myth and fact games about sex, pregnancy, STIs, and menstruation. Girls will also get to learn martial arts, brainstorm and demystify gender roles as a group, discuss people they look up to, and place their goals on the official Shanti Goal Setting Wall among many other activities.   

We are very excited to work with you Gloria and cannot wait to see what you bring to the Teen Girls Workshops!