HEALTH EDUCATION EMPOWERS GIRLS AND WOMEN

BY JACQUELINE TUCCI

In the Wakiso district in central Uganda, children under 18 make up 53% of the population (compared to approximately 20% in Canada). Since 2018, PWRDF has partnered with Action for Rural Women’s Empowerment (ARUWE) on projects to empower young women and adolescents in the region. PWRDF and ARUWE have completed four successful projects to date, tackling teenage pregnancies, early marriages, incidents of sexual and genderbased violence (SGBV) and HIV & STI infections among female adolescents, young women and teenage mothers.

ARUWE’s Girls and Women Lead project, supported by PWRDF, began a new phase in May 2023 and will run until April 2026. It aims to reduce rates of teenage pregnancy in Wakiso through education, training and increased access to SRHR services.

In Wakiso, COVID-19-related school closures have left upwards of 15 million students out of school. Teenage pregnancy is a major contributing factor in girls leaving school early and never returning, and between March 2020 and June 2021, rates of pregnancy amongst women and girls aged 10-24 in Wakiso increased by 22.5%.

PWRDF is supporting this new project phase with $210,000 to build on the success of previous ARUWE projects.

In 2021, ARUWE implemented the second phase of the Girls and Women Lead project. ARUWE provided sexual and reproductive health education to female students at St. Raphael Senior Secondary School, a co-ed day and boarding school in Wakiso. Many students there come from families experiencing poverty. They are often faced with the decision to either abandon their studies or find somebody who can afford to fund their tuition. Many resort to seeking out men who may pay their tuition in exchange for sexual favours.

“We are very troubled as a school to have incidences of students getting pregnant while still young and carrying out [unsafe] abortions,” said St. Raphael’s head teacher. “Recently one of the students who had carried out an unsafe