Zitheka – it will be possible

An Educated Girls’ Generation – Zitheka

By Annika Rigole, Program Intern

The coldest time of year is drawing to a close in Malawi and, as the days get both longer and warmer, it is examination time in schools across the country. At Providence Secondary School in Mulanje District, where AGE Africa is based, graduating Form 4 students are just beginning the four weeks of school-leaving examinations that will determine their eligibility for post-secondary education and other career opportunities. Each day they complete one or two exam papers, after which they scatter across the school grounds in small groups to debrief and study for the next day. This year, a total of 13 AGE scholars at Providence and AGE’s three other partner schools are Form 4 students, making up AGE’s largest ever graduating class. As they complete their examinations in late August, these girls will join what many are hoping will become a generation of educated young women in Malawi.

Marching for girls’ rights in Malawi. Photo by AGE Program Intern, Annika Rigole.

That such a generation is possible in Malawi was the theme of a recent weekend retreat for female secondary school students that AGE organized in coordination with a local non-profit organization named Girl Leader Empowerment Program (GILEP). This retreat and the new partnership with GILEP are part of AGE’s effort to reach a broader variety of adolescent girls with its programming – in this case, girls who attend one of the country’s many Community Day Secondary Schools (C.D.S.S.’s). C.D.S.S’s are more prevalent, accessible, and less expensive than the boarding schools where AGE currently supports scholars, but they typically face greater challenges in providing quality education for their students. AGE and GILEP’s July retreat engaged 33 students from 2 such schools located in Chiradzulu and Mulanje Districts, while 40 students from 2 C.D.S.S.’s in Blantyre and Mulanje Districts will participate in a second retreat in the middle of August. The July retreat took place over the course of 2 days and offered the students sessions on such topics as personal values, sexual and reproductive health, cultural traditions and beliefs, and girls’ rights. The participants opened the retreat with a strong message of girls’ empowerment, marching through a busy market center with a large banner as they sang about staying in school and avoiding pregnancy and early marriage. The retreat was a great learning experience, both for the participants as well as for AGE and GILEP. The students all left eager to share what they had learned with their friends as well as to participate in further life-skills-related trainings. For the upcoming second retreat, an extra 1/2 day has been added to the program to allow us to incorporate career guidance components.

For AGE, these two retreats with GILEP have been an opportunity to deepen our expansion into life skills programming. After implementing a small initial series of career guidance workshops with AGE scholars throughout the first half of this year, AGE began the process of developing a full life skills and career guidance curriculum for secondary school girls with the assistance of a Malawian consultant. We will further develop our curriculum at a week-long retreat with all 21 current AGE scholars at the end of August and will then continue to pilot test sessions through 2010. We will be ready to implement the full curriculum at the beginning of 2011. Content for the week-long retreat will blend life skills and career guidance themes, offering training in a maximally beneficial set of skills and knowledge to all of our AGE Scholars.

Life skills, which the WHO defines as the “abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life,” are particularly important for adolescent girls in Malawi, who face numerous socio-economic, cultural, parental, and peer pressures that often lead to early marriage, pregnancy, and/or their dropping out of school. Creating space in which students can develop a stronger set of communication and interpersonal skills, decision-making and critical thinking skills, and coping and self-management skills may be the key to ensuring that more stay in school to finish their education, and that, even if post-secondary opportunities are unavailable, they are nonetheless better positioned to achieve improved outcomes in life. AGE is excited about initiating this type of programming with its scholars, as well as about the potential that exists to expand its reach to more students at our partner schools and beyond. Sitting on the grass at Providence chatting with two students as they take a study break, I’m easily reminded of what we are trying to achieve. Felicitas, a Form 4 student who wants to become a lawyer, explains the reasoning behind this choice to me. Women should be able to do the same things that men do, she says, and she wants to be in the middle of the action, in court, defending their right to do so. If we can help more girls build such confidence and conviction about what they are entitled to and capable of, then the only word that comes to mind when I think of an educated girls generation in Malawi is zitheka – it will be possible.