Why Commitment to Girls?
No one is more vulnerable than an uneducated girl living in poverty. She is at risk of dropping out of school early, sexual violence, forced marriage, early pregnancy, complications during childbirth and contracting STDs such as HIV/AIDS. If she survives the above, she will raise her children in poverty and they too will face the same challenges. Unfortunately today, more than 62 million girls around the world are not in school.
Here in Uganda, girls face daily threats to their progress that include sexual violence, forced child marriage, early pregnancy, and pressures to drop out of school early. As is true in many countries, women and girls suffer the greatest burden of poverty, injustices, and abuses. In Uganda, our social and cultural landscape subordinates, excludes, isolates, and disempowers girls. 85% of girls drop out of school early and 86.9% of rape victims in Uganda are between the ages of 9 and 17.3. This has alarming social, economic and health repercussions.
There are close to one million adolescent girls aged 10-19 living within the Central Region of Uganda where we work and over 900,000 girls experience vulnerability at the individual, home and community level. The trend in this region shows that the vast majority of girls between 10 and 15 years old are enrolled in primary school, but nearly 50% drop out by age 15.
We know that countries with more girls who have advanced education tend to have lower maternal mortality rates, lower infant mortality rates, lower rates of HIV/AIDS, and better child nutrition. Therefore, Just Like My Child Foundation Uganda believes that investing in the empowerment of adolescent girls means supporting the most powerful force for change globally.
Born out of experiencing these statistics first hand and driven by the desires of strong community leaders to create change in Uganda, Just Like My Child Foundation has developed, tested and is implementing the Girl power project, Project Justice and the Mandela Project to equip vulnerable adolescent girls with the knowledge, skills and assets to stay in school and protect themselves from forced child marriage, early pregnancy, diseases and generational poverty. The programs were designed to be an “all-in” intervention for girls and their communities.