Luc's project: Preventing girls school dropouts, unwanted pregnancies and marriage

Luc says about his project: We focus on the girl education. We have observed a big gap between the boys and girls at school. Our survey revealed that the girls are forced by parents to leave school to engage in income generating activities and marriage. We are working at combating the girl forced school dropouts and early unwanted pregnancies and marriage. We have conducted mobilization campaigns to spread the project message. At this level we wanted to change the parents' perspective and attitude about girls, from being ‘a family income generating asset‘ to ‘an essential part of the inclusive development process’ in order to reduce the gender gap between boys and girls at school by next year. Also, We are conducting training and debates on children rights with parents and adolescents to spread the awareness of children’s rights and discuss the impact of the violation of the right of education for girls. The common behavioural problems of children and the causes of forced school dropout and early unwanted marriage and pregnancies are discussed in the debate. The solutions are being commonly proposed by parents and adolescents; like getting the dropouts back to school or joining vocational training centers to get extra skills (tailoring, hair dressing, soap making and baking) to help them overcome their future social-economic challenges. Furthermore, we will have training on reproductive health (RH) and establish adolescent RH club for adolescent to get the accurate knowledge, information and skills about RH matters and share experiences to help them overcome their sexual and reproductive health challenges including preventing unwanted pregnancies and reducing early unwanted marriage. What did KidsRights do to support you? KidsRights guided me through my proposal writing by providing me with helpful feedback through a number of questions to help me frame my project much better and make it SMART. Also, they supported me with the fund to help me implement my project. Do you have some inspiring and encouraging words for other potential changemakers? Being a changemaker is challenging BUT don't be afraid and NEVER give up. We normally have the resources to bring solutions to problems and injustices in our community, BUT we lack the skills to use them to achieve the right solution. Since, the community problem is never an issue affecting a single person , please NEVER do it alone, invite people around you, talk with them about what you think is the problem discuss the causes together and propose the solutions together. NEVER underestimate someone's ideas, all the ideas coming from the people you invited to tackle the issue are helpful and need to be taken with care and respect even if you might not take them all.