In 2009, Forgirlsake presented a certificate to the girls, congratulating them on their scholarships to attend Buhugu Secondary School in Sironko.
Above: Some of the girls reading the certificate with Wilber Madaba, Founder of Shared Blessings. Wilber is responsible for offering the scholarship funds to the most promising girls and ensuring they work hard in their studies. He himself is an educator who strives to raise the literacy of women.
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info@forgirlsake.org |
| Educating Girls in Sironko, Uganda: A Talk with Wilber |
Wilber Madaba, educator and founder of Shared Belssings (the organization in Sironko that distributes our scholarship funds) talks about the barriers to girls’ education.
In Sironko the girls cannot go home and do homework. When they get home their mothers say, “You have been sitting all day, now it is your time to work”. The girls do the washing and cleaning and there is no encouragement to go to school and do well. A boy can be late coming home after football and no one questions him as to where he has been. And he can do homework. Most girls will just drop out because they have missed so much of their education. So Wilber tells the girls that at school they must work twice as hard since they cannot study at home.
White light shines on the mountain at the girls’ school. Wilber points and says that is the light of God’s blessing touching us. See more photos.
Sironko District is located in the eastern region of Uganda. It is a rural area where most of the houses
are made of grass-thatched roofs, with mud/wattle walls and rammed earth floor.
HIV/AIDS is among the top ten causes of mortality in the district, with an estimated number of 24,609 infected people. The impact of the epidemic is great on the individuals, families and community. A
large number of children have been orphaned. There are culturally rooted challenges in carrying out interventions. Parents avoid talking to their children about sex and HIV/AIDS, and although voluntary counselling and testing is being encouraged, there is a poor response by men.
Sironko district has a high prevalence of child abuse cases, perpetuated by a number of causes, namely peer (boy/girl) relationships, rape, inability of parents/guardians to provide for their families, and a
general preference for boys at the expense of girls. This has consequently increased the number of child pregnancies, child marriages, child mothers/parents, unwanted pregnancies, and street children.
These and other causes have resulted in a high level of school dropouts. The education sector, which has inadequate physical facilities and poor staff welfare, is an environment hostile to girls.
Reports indicate that poor performance and increased dropouts prevail as a result of gender inequalities and discrimination at the community and individual levels. Such discrimination includes preference for educating boys over girls. Girls miss out on educational opportunities due to the dominant perception among the population that girls are a source wealth, along with the unbalanced domestic workload between boys and girls both at home.
As we continue to support girls in Sironko and elsewhere, we hope that a higher cultural value will be attached to their education and to the positive role they play in raising the standard of living of the communities in which they live.
For more information on the positive imact of girls’ education, visit www.unicef.org/mdg/gender.html
and www.ikat.org.
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