Skip to main content

Home/ Teachers Without Borders/ Group items tagged child marriage

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Teachers Without Borders

'Buy a Girl:' An Unusual Anti Child Marriage Campaign - India Real Time - WSJ - 1 views

  •  
    As India celebrated Akshaya Tritiya on Tuesday, a festival associated with mass weddings, many activists renewed their calls against child marriage. "Raise your voice against child marriage on #AkshayTritiya, an auspicious day for Hindu marriage in India," UNICEF India said on Twitter. There are many campaigns around the world against child marriage in India, where the practice remains common despite being illegal. Perhaps the most original one is "The Girl Store" - which some may find is in bad taste.
Teachers Without Borders

Child brides: For poorer, most of the time | The Economist - 0 views

  • One negative effect of early marriage is the exclusion of women from education in favour of domestic work and child rearing. So countries with a high prevalence of child marriages also tend to have low literacy rates for young women.
  •  
    One negative effect of early marriage is the exclusion of women from education in favour of domestic work and child rearing. So countries with a high prevalence of child marriages also tend to have low literacy rates for young women.
Teachers Without Borders

U.N. Task Force Pushes for Investment in Teen Girls - IPS ipsnews.net - 0 views

  • Risk of sexual violence, limited access to education, and health issues such as HIV/AIDS and forced female genital mutilation/cutting are just a few of the obstacles adolescent girls face in developing countries, yet these girls are the key to the future and the eradication of poverty, stress experts at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
  • Children "face grave vulnerabilities and grave challenges as they make the transition towards adulthood," he added. The U.N. Adolescent Girls Task Force, which organised a panel on the issue Friday, is comprised of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), the children's agency UNICEF, the newly-launched U.N. Women, and several other U.N. entities.
  • In countries where the majority of the population is extremely young, such as Malawi, investing and empowering adolescents through education is critical to the country's development. The median age in Malawi 17 years old, and 73.6 percent of the population is below the age of 29, noted Janet Zeenat Karim, head of the Malawi delegation to the U.N.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It aims to facilitate the empowerment of adolescent girls by working with governments and civil society on policies to that effect. In a joint statement, the UNAGTF organisations listed educating adolescent girls, improving their health, protecting them from violence, promoting their leadership, and collect statistic data on them as five priorities in their efforts to advance the rights of adolescent girls.
  • Karim praised the work of U.N. agencies in Malawi, where adolescent girls face many challenges, including early marriage and early childbearing, which pose serious health risks. Additionally, females account for more than half of all HIV infections in Malawi. The level of sexual and reproductive health of girls in Malawi is among the worst in the world.
  • "The UNFPA has mobilised and worked with the National Youth Council [of Malawi] to advocate against a bill on child marriage that was going to go to parliament that would have made the legal age of a marriage 16," she said.
  • Wong also stressed the importance of respecting local culture while introducing new ideas and relevant practices. In Ethiopia, for example, UNFPA has found that working with the community is enormously beneficial, particularly in bringing about long-term change that seriously improves the lives and futures of adolescent girls.
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Kenya: Overcoming Cultural Obstacles to Girls' Education in Dadaab - 0 views

  •  
    Dadaab - A mix of cultural practices, such as early and forced marriage, as well as child labour, are depriving girls of education in the Dadaab refugee complex in eastern Kenya. Out of Dadaab's estimated population of 463,000 mainly Somali refugees, more than half are children under 18; of these about 38 percent attend school. The proportion of girls in the camps' primary and secondary schools is 38 and 27 percent, respectively, according to the UN Refugee Agency. A third of girls aged between 5 and 13 in Dabaab go to school; for those aged 14 to 17, only one in 20 are enrolled.
Teachers Without Borders

IRIN Africa | ZIMBABWE: Thousands of girls forced out of education | Zimbabwe | Childre... - 0 views

  • HARARE, 7 November 2011 (IRIN) - Poverty, abuse and cultural practices are preventing a third of Zimbabwean girls from attending primary school and 67 percent from attending secondary school, denying them a basic education, according to a recent study which found alarming dropout rates for girls. ''Sexual harassment and abuse by even school teachers and parents, cultural issues, lack of school fees, early marriage, parental commitments and early pregnancies are some of the contributing factors to the dropout by the girl child,'' said the authors of "Because I am a Girl" by Plan International, a nonprofit organisation that works to alleviate child poverty.
  • According to the Plan International report, the long distances that children in rural areas have to travel to reach school, and the burden that girl children face because they often have to assume the responsibilities of being head of the household after the death of their parents, are other factors contributing to the high dropout rate for girls.
  • A 2005 government programme of forced evictions, known as Operation Murambatsvina (Drive out Trash), which uprooted some 700,000 people from urban areas across the country, compounded the difficulties of accessing education for girls from affected households. Amnesty International, in its report ''Left Behind: The Impact of Zimbabwe's Forced Evictions on the Right to Education'' released in October 2011, documents the ways in which the evictions disrupted the primary and secondary education of an estimated 222,000 children.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Amnesty International report notes that many girls at Hopley became sex workers, entered relationships with older men, or married at a young age after eviction from their homes, and the government's failure to support them to re-enrol in school.
  • Zimbabwe's education system, once considered a model for other African countries, has been steadily declining over the last decade due to the economic crisis. Many schools lack text books and other supplies.
Teachers Without Borders

Midterm report: Tanzania's educational revolution needs investment | Global development... - 0 views

  • Enrolment at primary schools nationwide has leapt from 59% in 2000 to 95.4% today, putting the impoverished country well on course to achieve the second millennium development goal (MDG) of primary school education for all by 2015.
  • half of pupils will fail to qualify for secondary school, with 3,000 girls a year dropping out due to pregnancy.
  • The progress has come with a lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Enrolment has grown so fast in Tanzania that the school system is creaking with overcrowded classrooms, shortages of books, teachers and toilets, and reports of corporal punishment being used to keep order. In short, it seems that quality has been sacrificed for quantity.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • 32-year-old Grace Mayemba, who teaches English, Swahili and social studies. "It's so hard because there are so many," she says."They are noisy and can do anything. To make each child understand is very difficult but you have to try your best.
  • Salima Omari, 36, a science and maths teacher, faces classes of 76 pupils. "It's difficult to cope with when you want to give one-to-one support. There are only four toilets for the whole school and two for the teachers, and there is not much water. The MDG has been good for Tanzania overall, but it was rushed."
  • With significant donor support from Britain and others, the government has allocated more than 2tn shillings (£856,000) for education in 2010-11, about double its spending on health. But most schools still lack electricity or water – nine in 10 children cannot wash their hands after using the toilet. Education activists warn that Tanzania, where half the population is below 18, still has a long way to go to achieve the MDG in spirit.
  • "Students will be enrolled, but in a few months, because of no shoes or textbooks, they can easily drop out," says Anthony Mwakibinga, its acting co-ordinator. "Boys often drop out for child labour near diamond mines. Girls drop out because of early pregnancy or marriage in some areas."
  • In Tanzania, parents are still expected to contribute to teaching materials, uniforms and even classroom construction. Still, it's not enough. Mwakibinga says he has come across classes of 200 pupils where quality inevitably suffers. "What do you from expect from a classroom of 200 children, even if the teacher works like a donkey? What if the 200 children have no books?"
  • The national teacher-pupil ratio has climbed from 1:41 in 2000 to 1:51 today. New teacher training colleges, including some in the private sector, have opened in a bid to meet the demand, but some trainees are allegedly rushed through in three or four months. The profession also suffers from low public esteem.
  • One teacher, Florence Katabazi, 37, says: "I chose teaching and to this day people think I'm a failure. People say, 'I want my son to be a doctor or lawyer, not a teacher,' It's shameful to be a teacher. Everyone runs away from the profession. If they want to be an accountant, they just use teaching as a bridge. At the end of the day we've got 10,000 half-baked teachers and only 400 good ones."
  • Struggling to maintain classroom discipline, some of the country's 160,000 primary school teachers resort to corporal punishment. Noel Ihebuzor, Unicef's chief of basic education and life skills, says: "They see it as controlling children and don't feel they are doing anything wrong. They were brought up that way. We've had stories where parents take children to the head and say, 'He's stubborn, cane him for me.'"
  • "Another problem is the provision of decent training services to teachers. The ministry has tried to develop a management strategy this year but it has not been implemented because of scarce resources. It's good to have a target, but a target without resources is a problem."
  • the pass rate for the primary school leaving exam is just 49.4%.
  • One teacher has a class of 166, with some pupils forced to lie on the bare concrete floor during lessons. They keep up spirits in the dusty, tree-lined central courtyard by playing steel instruments on the bandstand. In headteacher Abdallah Mgomi's office, a typed sheet of paper on the wall reminds anyone who reads it: "Quality is never an accident."
Teachers Without Borders

UNICEF - Afghanistan - UNICEF Regional Director highlights challenges for girls in visi... - 0 views

  • UNICEF is working to increase the numbers of girls in school by supporting the training of female teachers and setting up child-friendly classrooms.  Mr. Toole visited female students at Herat Girls High School to see such efforts firsthand.“To see such a big number of girls who are enthusiastic about becoming teachers, doctors or engineers is extremely encouraging. Their protection is among our key concerns in this country where early marriage and the denial of access to education for females is still deeply rooted in the society,” said Mr. Toole.
  • “Especially in high-risk, difficult to access areas, UNICEF is promoting community-based schools,” said UNICEF Representative in Afghanistan Catherine Mbengue. “We set up community management committees for each school, discussing with them from the onset the importance of girls’ education and their role in making it happen.”Afghanistan has seen an improvement in the number of children – including girls – who are enrolled in school. Today about three quarters of boys and nearly half of girls of primary school age are enrolled in primary school. While this is a drastic increase from the 42 per cent rate for boys and 15 per cent rate for girls in 2000, the gender gap remains wide.
  • A total of 613 school incidents were recorded from January to November 2009, a frightening increase from 348 incidents in 2008.  Insecurity is pervasive — with continued threats and direct attacks against schools, health centres and humanitarian workers.
Teachers Without Borders

allAfrica.com: Ghana: School-Going Children Still At Home - From Edmond Gyebi, Tamale - 0 views

  • In spite of numerous interventions by governments to ensure quality basic education for all Ghanaian children, the majority of children of school-going age in some parts of the Northern Region are still not in school.
  • Against this backdrop, the Right To Play, a child-centered international non-governmental organisation (NGO) operating in the three northern regions, has taken steps to ensure that all children of school-going age in their operational areas are enrolled in school.
  • The Right To Play, currently, operates in about 50 communities in four districts in the Upper East, Upper West and Northern Regions. The NGO is using all forms of play activities including drama, talent hunt and football competitions to effect changes in the behaviour and development of its target groups.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The Northern File gathered that young girls in the Tingoli community see early marriage as the surest way of removing themselves and their parents from poverty, to the total neglect of their education.
1 - 9 of 9
Showing 20 items per page