2021 REPORT
2021 REPORT: EMPOWERING 50 TEEN MOTHERS
PROJECT BACKGROUND
In 2020, the world experienced the deadly Corona Virus pandemic which resulted in the closure of schools across the globe. In Ghana, schools were closed early 2020 resulting in lots of school-going girls staying home and being exposed to all sorts of dangers, one of which is teenage pregnancy. According to the Ghana Health Service, about 110,000 girls between the ages of 10-and 19 years became pregnant in 2020 during the lockdown of schools.
As a measure to reduce this damage caused to girls’ education in the country, we at LifeAgain launched the #Empower50TeenMothers2021 campaign in March 2021 to empower at least 50 teenage mothers by supporting them to either go back to school or to learn a skill to aid them to get their lives back. We launched this campaign without any funds to implement it. All we had was our passion and faith to create change in the lives of these girls. However, through donations from the WGHS 1994 year group and that of many others through Global Giving, we raised enough funds to implement our campaign.
PROJECT UPDATE
The team after deliberation decided to reach out to six (6) communities in two districts in the Upper West region. These two districts are the Wa West district and Daffiama Bussie Issa (DBI) district. In the Wa West district, two communities were selected which are Dorimon and Dabo while four communities were selected in DBI which include Fian, Bussie, Wogu and Issa.
COMMUNITY ENTRY
Community entry is the first thing we do in our program. This is when we visit the selected communities and meet up with the leaders of the communities including the Assemblymen/women, chiefs, Unit Committee members, etc to introduce our program, get to know more about the community from them, and start building a relationship that will make our work easier when we start. We also visit the health center of each community to gather data on teenage pregnancy cases in the community to ascertain the prevalence of teenage pregnancy in the community. We started our community entry on 10th June 2021 and ended on 17th June 2021. Below are pictures from our Community Entries.
SELECTION OF BENEFICIARIES
This is the next thing we do after our community entry. It usually takes place a week after the community entry. The period of one week is given to the community leaders to inform the community about LifeAgain and put together girls in the community who need our support. During the selection day, we meet up with the girls, introduce the program to them again and then start conducting one-on-one interview with them to get to know them more and how we can help them. During the interview, we get to know their stories, what they want to do with their lives; if they want to go back to school or learn a skill. After the interviews are over, we select the girls who meet our selection criteria.
We started our selections on 18th June 2021 and ended on 2nd July 2021. We reached out to a total of 80 pregnant girls and teenage mothers. Twenty (20) of them want to go back to school; 15 to Primary and Junior High School and 5 to Senior High School. These girls will be provided with scholarship to enable them return to school to continue with their students. Ten (10) of them have already completed Senior High School and want to continue to the Tertiary level but we currently do not have the funds to support them at that level. However, we informed them that we will be looking for other opportunities for them. The remaining 50 girls cannot go back to school mostly because they do not have someone to support them with the taking care of their babies, thus, they opted for skills training. These 50 girls would be taken through a one-week training on soap making including bar soap, liquid soap, shower gel and powdered soap.
SKILLS TRAINING
We commenced the Soap Making training on 20th August with over 50 participants (pregnant girls and teenage mothers) from 6 communities in the Upper West Region. One of the communities was selected as the training center and participants from the other communities had to move from their communities to the training center. We provided transportation for the participants outside of the training center to enable them to come for the training. We also provided lunch for all participants throughout the training. It was a one-week long training and we trained them on making 10 products namely; shower gel, liquid soap, bar soap (key soap, BF soap, guardian soap), Moringa soap, and Azuma blow (round soap), parazone, body pomade, and hair pomade. Below are the pictures from the week-long training.
At the end of the week training on 27th August, our beneficiaries were able to make the items below;
On the last day of the training, we had a climax event where guardians of the beneficiaries as well as assembly men and chiefs of the various communities were present to witness the successful completion of the girls. We also had the media (Joy News and Metro TV) who covered the whole event.
To mark their successful completion of the intensive week-long training, we gave the participants certificates to prove that they have undergone training in soap making as seen below
We completed the support package by giving all the beneficiaries Start-up Kits to enable them start their own soap making business immediately to be able to earn money to take care of themselves and children. The items were given to them in the presence of their guardians who were encouraged by the LifeAgain team to support their children as they start their businesses.
BACK TO SCHOOL
The beneficiaries who want to go back to school were also present at the climax event with their guardians to receive their scholarship package to enable them get back to school immediately. Before the presentation of the items, we had a contract signing between LifeAgain, the beneficiaries and their guardians with the assembly men serving as witnesses. The purpose of the contract signing is to ensure that our beneficiaries are protected from any form of forced marriage and given the support they would need from their guardians to stay in school and complete their studies. Should the beneficiaries or their guardians fail to comply with the terms of the contract after it is being signed, they will refund all the scholarship items given to them by LifeAgain. This serves as a deterrent and ensures the contract is not breached by either party. Below are pictures from the contract signing.
After the contract signing, the scholarship items were presented to them. Each beneficiary was given 2 school uniforms, 2 pair of shoes, 20 exercise books, a bag, mathematical set, 10 pens and a graph book as seen below
CONCLUSION
The #Empower50TeenMothers campaign we launched early this year to empower 50 teenage mothers as a way to reduce the damage caused by COVID 19 resulting to about 110,000 teenage pregnancies in the country have been successful. Thanks to your generous donation, we exceeded our campaign target of 50 girls to about 100 girls. Thanks for believing in our work and helping us to touch the lives of vulnerable girls who would have otherwise have their lives destroyed but now, they have a second chance to pursue their dreams and aspirations.
We would be grateful if you could continue to support us in our vision of creating a world in which teenage pregnancy is no hindrance to girls’ empowerment. Your donation was instrumental in achieving our #Empower50TeenMothers campaign and we would be grateful if you could again support us financially to implement our next year’s campaign.