Campaign to promote girl child rights ends

PLAN Rwanda has concluded a nationwide sensitization against the barriers to girl child education. The closing ceremony took place at Kigali, Nyabugogo under theme Reducing barriers to quality education for girlsThe campaign was done through mobile road shows where people’s views were collected. The campaign was done as a build up to the International day of the Girl Child scheduled for 11th October.The campaign was named’’ Amaboko hejuru’’ or ‘’hands up’’. People raised their hands as a sign of commitment to stopping barriers to girls’ quality educationThe country director Plan Peter Van Dommelen told The Sunday Times the outcome of the campaign will not remove all the obstacles to access to education but will raise awareness.“We want more awareness, more debate and more discussion on the obstacles to girls education and individual change to overcome barriers to education,” he said before adding “we want people to take measures against obstacles to access to education.” During the campaign people were called to reduce the domestic work for girls, to play the role in ensuring the school environment is safe and free of violence and to allow girls to express themselves. According to Plan, one of the obstacles to girls’ education are poor performance and attendance due to a heavy burden of domestic work, gender-based violence and lack of access to sanitation facilities.In Rwanda access to primary education is high with 97% of girls in school after school fees were abolished. However, Plan Rwanda says poverty and other social cultural factors remain barriers to girls’ education. Retention of girls in schools begins to decline faster than that of boys. Plan Rwanda wants to motivate poor and disadvantaged primary and secondary school girls to continue and complete their education.“Rwanda is doing very well in girls’ education but completion of secondary school is still difficult for some girls”, says Dommelen.The communication officer in Plan Rwanda Alice Rwema Iribagiza said the campaign paid off because some people’s pledges were encouraging.She cites an example of a 13-year-old boy in Rubengera sector, Karongi district who pledged to convince his mother to reduce house work for her sister to have enough time for revising to improve her school performance.Ernest Murigo from Gasabo district who is a bus driver was contacted at Kinmironko by Plan Rwanda on girls’ education and he says parents are not doing enough to send girls to school. “A parent who wants a bright future for his girl child should shoulder the responsibility of giving enough time and school needs of the child but some don’t,”According to the statistics by the Ministry of Education, in 2011 the enrolment for girls in primary schools was 50.9 % of the total number of students.