ELSA UGANDA: Help the girl child go back to school to empower women

Esla Uganda has promised to help teenage mothers in Budondo sub-county, Jinja as they wait for government intervention. 

Teenage pregnancies have been on the rise in Uganda since the country was forced to declare a lockdown in March 2020 due to the Covid outbreak. 

Busoga region where Budondo sub county is located was among the most affected with 8000 teenage pregnancies recorded. The figure was recorded by the ministry of gender which started keeping track of the unfortunate phenomenon in 2020. 

Esla’s Racheal Musasizi visited the area and pledged that Esla would extend support girls in the area with training and how to face the challenges around them. 

"We want to give a hand in skilling these young mothers so as they can also look after their children,” Musasizi noted. 

She was speaking after she learned of the initiative by Good Hope School in Budondo. Good Hope decided to educate a girl children who had become pregnant during the lockdown. 

The founder of the school Meblone Mutekanga said she set up the school with the aim of giving back to the community. She said, “These girls face challenges in the community like discrimination, people who laugh at them all the time a reason why we gathered them to rebuild their confidence, educate them.” 

Meblone said that the school is constrained by its limited resources as the number of girls who continue to turn up at the school with similar unplanned pregnancies and its consequences grows. 

She said she hopes the government can render more assistance to schools like Good Hope which are taking children back to school who became parents themselves. 

On International Women’s Day, Meblone urged all members of society to think hard and act towards easing the situation of the girl child.