Empowerment on Girl Child
Empowering the girl child | | | |
Thursday, 19 July 2012 00:00 | View Comments arai Kuvirimirwa Features Writer
With sacrificing family resources to educate a girl child and a potential future leader still a big societal challenge, any effort to see the education of a girl is a huge boon. So when millions of dollars are poured into the effort, the impact cannot be overemphasised. The Campaign for Female Education (Camfed), introduced some few years back, has seen remarkable change of fortunes to many a rural folk.
Now, a US$19 million bursary programme has been launched to benefit 24 000 girls from disadvantaged families in rural Guruve, Mashonaland Central. The launch was conducted at colourful ceremony at Chifamba Secondary School in the area recently.
With testimonies of previous beneficiaries of the programme giving the clear picture of changed lives, more girls are set to change for the better. Already, lives have changed and tales are being told. More are coming, definitely.
Twenty-five-year-old Bridget Moyo was born in the dusty village of Wedza in a polygamous family.
Her mother sired six children and the other children under the genealogy of her father are incalculable. She needs to sit down and count them from her father’s first wife until the last.
Being a girl on a polygamous family, she was not spared from challenges women as a whole face. From birth she was automatically rendered a future beggar.
Her education was considered optional and it was the first thing to be sacrificed in a crisis.
Her brothers, uncles and male cousins’ needs had to come first for the family.
The family’s future was seen to be in their hands and blood, so it was to them that the family’s resources should be spent primarily.
As if that was not enough, the family was so much immersed in poverty. School fees and levies were a luxury they could only dream of and there wasn’t enough for the family to eat.
“I lost count of how many other people’s fields we worked in to make
Thursday, 19 July 2012 00:00 | View Comments arai Kuvirimirwa Features Writer
With sacrificing family resources to educate a girl child and a potential future leader still a big societal challenge, any effort to see the education of a girl is a huge boon. So when millions of dollars are poured into the effort, the impact cannot be overemphasised. The Campaign for Female Education (Camfed), introduced some few years back, has seen remarkable change of fortunes to many a rural folk.
Now, a US$19 million bursary programme has been launched to benefit 24 000 girls from disadvantaged families in rural Guruve, Mashonaland Central. The launch was conducted at colourful ceremony at Chifamba Secondary School in the area recently.
With testimonies of previous beneficiaries of the programme giving the clear picture of changed lives, more girls are set to change for the better. Already, lives have changed and tales are being told. More are coming, definitely.
Twenty-five-year-old Bridget Moyo was born in the dusty village of Wedza in a polygamous family.
Her mother sired six children and the other children under the genealogy of her father are incalculable. She needs to sit down and count them from her father’s first wife until the last.
Being a girl on a polygamous family, she was not spared from challenges women as a whole face. From birth she was automatically rendered a future beggar.
Her education was considered optional and it was the first thing to be sacrificed in a crisis.
Her brothers, uncles and male cousins’ needs had to come first for the family.
The family’s future was seen to be in their hands and blood, so it was to them that the family’s resources should be spent primarily.
As if that was not enough, the family was so much immersed in poverty. School fees and levies were a luxury they could only dream of and there wasn’t enough for the family to eat.
“I lost count of how many other people’s fields we worked in to make