Teaching girls to say ‘No’

At a time when primary school pupils are getting pregnant in large numbers, it is easy to just throw in the towel. So common are pregnancies among schoolgirls that not a week passes without media reports of schools where dozens of pupils get pregnant.

Amid such gloom, an initiative hinged on the strength of the 155,000-member countrywide all-girl association is striving to reverse the trend of adolescent pregnancy and school dropouts to restore the girl’ dignity with abstinence messages.

Notably, school heads involved in the peer education programme of the Kenya Girl Guides Association (KGGA) are witnessing tangible change in the lives of girls and boys in 1,195 schools in the Rift Valley and Coast provinces.

Ms Virginia Waweru, the head teacher of Naivasha Central Primary School, attests to the impact of the programme in averting teen pregnancies.

As a cluster leader coordinating five schools in Naivasha District, the school head, who was a senior teacher at Lakeview Primary School when the programme started in 2004, should know.

Talking to Living by phone, Waweru said: “I’ve been in two schools and seen girls’ behaviour change. In schools where I’ve been teaching, I know there has not been anything of that kind [pregnancy].”

Before the project started, the teacher says, pupils as young as in Standard Three would become pregnant, with record dropouts in Standard Eight due to the “unbecoming behaviour of boys and girls”.

Earning promotions

During an interview with the KGGA HIV/Aids life skills/peer education national trainer, Ms Magdalene Waweru, and Rift Valley regional coordinator, Beatrice Macharia, the guide leaders asserted that such has been the success of the programme that participating teachers are earning promotions on account of it.

Virginia Waweru would not directly link her rise from senior teacher at Lakeview Primary School in 2004 to deputy head in 2008 and now headteacher of Naivasha Central Primary to the peer education programme’s success, but she told Living:

“In January this year, the education office identified my potential to work in a more challenging school with a population of more than 1,500 pupils in the middle of the town. Maybe life skills certificates and participation in education activities added marks.”

The school head, who retained the cluster leader role after her latest promotion, says: “I’ve seen the behaviour of girls improve, and even that of boys”.

In Narok North District, Ilooiboti Primary headteacher Veronica John spoke of the challenges of working within the traditionalist Maasai culture, where early marriage is the norm and child sex is not a big deal.

Before the programme was launched, she said, it was normal for Standard Five girls to drop out of school.

“While curbing that completely is very difficult in this community, girls in the (KGGA) movement are abstaining and those who previously engaged in sex have confessed that they have stopped. We have been talking to them through the life skills module, which addresses their health and HIV/Aids,” she explained.

Titled Discovering the Potential of Girl Guides in Schools: A Life Skills Curriculum for Guide Leaders, the manual that is divided into three trimesters is jointly authored by KGGA and Family Health International (FHI), with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under APHIA II (Aids Population Health Integrated Assistance).

FHI, which is the Girl Guides’ link to USAID, groups six other strategic partners, including the National Organisation of Peer Educators, Catholic Relief Services, Social Impact and World Vision, all working on different aspects of HIV and Aids and tuberculosis prevention, treatment, care and support.

The manual deals with 12 topics including delaying sex, bodily changes, healthy behaviour, pregnancy, HIV, Aids and sexually transmitted infections, influences, friends and relationships, planning your future, staying safe and refusing drugs and alcohol.

Topics with a direct role in preventing pregnancy include values and strategies for saying “No”. Fertility awareness and myths and facts about pregnancy are also included.

According to Ms John, “HIV and Aids is what has really scared them. We take them to see for themselves people who are sick, infected and affected by HIV and Aids. This way, we have been able to pass the message that the way they contract Aids is the same way they will get pregnant.”

Before the launch of the programme, the teacher says, three to four girls were dropping out of school each year. But over the last four years that have coincided with the programme’s implementation at Ilooiboti Primary, only one girl — in Standard Eight — has dropped out.

“We’ve seen a lot of change. By inviting old girls of the school, some of whom are professionals in the army, the girls have seen that there is life beyond primary school, that there is life beyond marriage. Before the programme, we did not know how to tell them about the dangers of walking alone,” Ms John says.

Strengthened the movement

Tragically, a member of the Girl Guide movement was lured, raped and killed by a stranger. Her body was dumped in the compound of the dispensary, creating tension in the community.

However, the incident has at the same time strengthened the movement. According to the headteacher, the girls were able to see first-hand the need to always walk in groups to ward off sex predators.

In Koibatek District, the headteacher of Simotwet Primary School, Mr Philemon Korir, also has good things to say about the programme.

“We used to have two to three dropouts a year, but since 2007, the number has fallen to almost zero,” he said. There was one dropout last year, he said, but hastened to add: “She had eloped, and we think she became pregnant after dropping out of school.”

Over the last three years, said the headteacher who sits on the guidance and counselling panel and has been teaching topics under the life skills programme, they had achieved a lot as regards behaviour change and preventing teen pregnancies.

The success of the programme is hinged on the basic tenets of Girl Guide movement that dates back to 1922, and whose 10 laws — the Guide Law — are reminiscent of the Ten Commandments.

Peer education fits well with Guide Law Number Four, which states that, “A Guide is a friend to all a sister to every other Guide” while the abstinence message that the programme seeks to pass on too the girls is hinged on Guide Law Number Ten: “A Guide is pure in thought, word and deed.”

Girls in the programme have been able to use a “sister approach” to steer their peers clear of danger by invoking the tenth law, which requires them to remain pure. Each girl enrolling into the movement promises, among others, to obey the Guide Law.

Apart from the 155,000 girls in the movement, Living learned that KGGA’s quality abstinence message is also reaching more than 753,000 pupils in Rift Valley and Coast provinces, both boys and girls, with the former learning to treat girls with respect.

Says the national trainer, Magdalene Waweru: “We are proud that we’ve empowered girls. Their self-esteem is very high and they can negotiate for “No” in programme areas, where pregnancy rates are nose-diving.”

One of the biggest handicaps to achieving success in sex education has been attempts by some organisation to marginalise parents. KGGA’s secret has been roping in parents and community leaders, who, by seeing the dramatic change in children’s behaviour, have supported the programme’s activities.

“The programme has bridged the gap between the parent and the child,” the national trainer said, which is important at a time when home science, under which family life education falls, is not an examinable subject.

Adolescence, but especially menarche (the first menstrual period), can be traumatic for a girl who has not been prepared for it.

In co-ed schools, especially, an unprepared girl is usually confronted with taunts from boys, and the KGGA team gave cases of boys telling girls, “So you are now a woman?”

While menstruation does indeed mark transition to adulthood, the suggestion to a 12-year-old that “Sasa wewe ni mama (you are now a woman)” can be traumatic.

Menarche also signals to the boys that the girl is not just a woman, but “available” since “everybody is doing it”.

The Girl Guides have been taught communication skills that help them ward of invitations to premature sex, with statements like, “Everybody is doing it? I’m not doing it,” chief commissioner Juliana Mulandi said

The success that KGGA’s life skills programme has registered over the project period has left the movement seeking to extend its reach to secondary schools, where the situation is no better.

Given that the movement caters for all age groups — three-six years, Rainbows; six-11 years, Brownies; 11-14 years, Girl Guides; 14-18 years Rangers and 18-35 years young leaders, there is hope that, with minimal support, the abstinence message among young unmarried people will be spread more widely.

[email protected]