Botswana: EMA Girls promotes By Girls For Girls project

As a country we were celebrating 50 years of being United and Proud. EMA Girls is a movement that seeks to unite girls of our nation and help them to proudly stand up for themselves, and start taking responsibility of their lives. In Setswana we say “Mosadi Thari Ya Sechaba” which implies that women are the pillars of our nation, hence the need to stand up and take action towards the high dropout rates, sex indulgence, and the high rates of defilement.These cause social ills such as HIV/AIDS, Teenage Pregnancy, Illiteracy (due to high school drop outs) and ultimately unemployment. EMA Girls Association is aimed at largely empowering young girls to reach their full potentials, to advise them to abstain and to help them be a better generation.

The main objective of this project is to inspire young girls to live purposeful lives and to discover their potentials as future leaders of tomorrow. To teach and share the message of abstinence. Provide moral guidance and spiritual support to young girls. Empower young girls, enhance and tighten relationships and beneficial connections between girls during the annual girls camps, let alone to fight social ills such as HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancy and issues of defilement.

The main activities are:

• Talk session with college and school girls.
• Discussion regarding the issue of high rate teenage pregnancy and school drop outs.
• Talk session about the issue of young girls having sexual relationships with older men in the community.

The project has benefited about 5 100 with 2 500 active groups women The project reached 2 100 indirect beneficiaries. The total budget for the project is $ $1000.

On the endeavour  to preach abstinence as a way of reducing teenage pregnancy and school dropouts we haven’t been able to implement a monitoring and evaluation process to measure the impact of the 50-50 campaign. But this will be carried out once we have finished with the Central District which is the has the highest dropout rates. This will entail collection of information or report on EMA Girls progress from the visited schools by the Ministry of Education and Skills and Development to examine whether EMA Girls’ impact is visible or not.

However, the overall impact of EMA Girls preaching around schools will be based on comparison of statistics i.e. the statistics before the visitation will be compared to the statistics of teenage pregnancy and school dropouts after EMA Girls efforts to preach abstinence. The overall idea is to measure the movement’ s impact, efficiency and effectiveness in fighting teenage pregnancy and school dropouts as well as promoting academic excellence amongst young girls. Monitoring and evaluation will be achieved by conducting research and interviewing students and teachers. EMA Girls’ references from schools can also be considered.

With over 2500 followers on social media we have getting a lot of exposure because of the work we do and we have invitations coming almost every day of schools and institutions that would like us to visit them but we in most cases turn these invitations down or keep postponing them due to financial constraints. Our main concern is transport. EMA Girls is made up of five (5) girls in tertiary and our monthly subscriptions are not enough to finance our transport to various places especially schools as far as Francistown and so forth. we would like the ministry to get in partnership with us and provide us with transport to every destination we want to reach

Furthermore, the Ministry can either assign a Government car to transport us or to provide us with bus fare. We have a time plan of the schools we want to attend to which we created using the Statistics we got from the Ministry of Education and Skills Development but the problem becomes the organization is not financially stable to reach us to the further parts of Botswana which need our assistance. The challenge has not been overcome yet, but the Ladies Fundraising Dinner we hosted this month has enabled us to have a few funds which we can visit about 5 school with.

We believe that as young girls keep engaging in sexual activities, it’s not the rules that get broken but the people. It is not too late to show other girls that it is possible to wait until the right time to start engaging in sex. As well as to motivate, inspire and encourage young girls to take their lives seriously and discover their purposes, talents and skills from a young age. We therefore dedicate our lives as EMA Girls to mentor, inspire, empower and in every girl child and to possibly have a base in Gaborone in future.

EMA Girls hosts annual girls’ camps where girls travel to the chosen area and have a great time of learning from each other, playing games and equipping each other to be better women of our generation. The movement occasionally hosts workshops and seminars on girls’ empowerment and abstinence including fund raising events such as Ladies High Teas and Ladies dinners and the proceeds are used to either give back to the community or to finance the school trips. Women and young women have been largely empowered because in such events we bring in inspirational women to come address different topics affecting women.

Men are so supportive, we are receiving emails and calls from so many of them who want to make donations and those who ask how they can be of help. An example is a message we received on our Facebook Page from Mr Thabo Mphoyakgosi, “You girls rock, keep it up. I wish to donate one sweet day. My email is mphoyakgosi@gmail.com.  Lets see how you can be helped.” This is a message to us that even if our movement is for girls we have men who see the need to offer their support to a good course.

Teenage pregnancy rates are lowered, girls are able to say no to older men who defile them and we believe if we carry on we will never as a country experience scenarios of the community striking on the streets with banners written “We shall not forget” because young girls are becoming more careful and are striving towards making the right choices in life.

EMA Girls suggest collaborating with the Ministry of Education and Skills Development and the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture based on the outcome from the Monitoring and evaluation process. The ministries can only opt to partner with EMA Girls only if the results of their work bring out a significant improvement and change lowering the statistics of teenage pregnancy and school dropouts. Partnership with the Ministries comes in as a way to enhance and quicken our vision to bring out the best from a young girl as well as increasing concentration on school work to achieve academic excellence.

However,  this is because our movement is not only focused on preaching abstinence but uses abstinence as a way to encourage young girls to divert their focus on school works as far as their education is concerned. We aspire to reach all the regions across the country hence we believe partnering with you comes as a vital aspect to attain such a goal. A collaboration of EMA Girls and the two Ministries include: exchange of all necessary information, tools and resources that can assist in reaching out to young girls. Working together in planning tours and visits around schools, and employing fundamental principles and techniques to help young girls to focus on their education and bettering their lives.