Ending Gender Inequality and Girl Child Marginalization in Malomo

Gender inequality and gender based violence are commonplace but silently epidemic in Malomo community, Ntchisi district. Currently existing laws governing the rights of each member of the family is not user-friendly or tailor-made for remotely rural and illiterate women, let alone easily accessible. As a result they enable the subordination of women and girls. In 2019 under the influence of Creative Centre for Community Mobilization (CRECCOM), the school administration created a group composed of women called Malomo Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) Mothers Group as an extra layer of support to the community’s School Management Committee (SMC) and PTA to support girls schooling. As Deputy Headmaster for Malomo Community Day Secondary School, I oversee the activities of this Mothers Group. This group’s main objectives include using every effort to bring dropout girls back to school, mentoring, guiding and counselling girls, and mobilising community support for girl’s education. The women are from surrounding 33 villages, most of whom are functionally illiterate. The group does several fundraising activities such as farming and sewing in an effort to raise financial support for needy girls to complete their secondary education.

Ensuring that all girls are in school and happily learning is critical to protecting them from early marriage and reducing their vulnerability to sexual and gender-based violence. I have just graduated this year from Master of Laws with specialization in women and the law and international rights of the child. My project aims at enhancing gender equality through empowering and equipping rural women and girls with practical knowledge of the law as productive women in their own society. To effectively step down the knowledge and skills acquired from my law studies of human rights of women law and children’s rights law and to heavily contribute to the mindset change in people of my society, I arrange and coordinate training sessions for Malomo Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) Mothers Group to equip them with the necessary knowledge of the law as women in their own society so that they report and counteract even the hidden-unnoticed household vices which retard progress in helping continuous academic engagement for our girls

The project constitutes Malomo CDSS Women’s Groups as a primary strategy of developing and enhancing the capacity of women to be active members and vigilant in their communities in every aspect of girls’ lives. By the end of this project, all key stakeholders will become competent in identifying and reporting any early child marriage and anything which negatively affect girls schooling. There will be equal voice and power in families: cultural and traditional beliefs and practices in the families which are less recognized as harming and undermining women’s voices will be exposed, shamed and ended.