The Girl’s Conference
Last week I attended a girl’s conference – a district-wide annual conference which is attended by female students and their teachers across all the schools in a district. The conference is one of the several activities undertaken by ActionAid to advocate for girl’s rights and the importance of education for them. Attended by over 60 students and their teachers, the three-day conference left me inspired and recharged.
The conference kick started by reviewing the previous action plans that the schools had agreed upon. The teachers shared their honest reflections on the progress that has been made and the areas that still needs to be addressed. A significant amount of time of the conference was spent on explaining to the learners what their rights were, how those rights get violated and the necessary measures that should be taken. This was well connected to the “body mapping” session which not only increased their awareness on how their body changes after puberty but also emphasised how these changes dictate the shift in their existing relationships with the society. Through the sex education session, the girls were informed about the negative impacts of early marriages and pregnancies. Each and every facilitator made room for group activities which allowed the girls to discuss and brainstorm about the issues in their communities and the ways they would address them. Though I could not follow much of the discussion due to language barriers, it definitely gave me goosebumps seeing how confident and determined these young girls were to fight for their right to education.
One the second day the girls were taken to the Parliament, the international airport and the meteorological department. Not only did the girls learn about these places, but they were also inspired by meeting women professionals in these organisations. The lack of female role models is one of the major reasons why the drop out rate of girls is high in most of the rural areas in Malawi. So, on the last day of the conference, the District Education Manager, the Executive Director of ActionAid Malawi and the CEO of one of the organisations came and shared their life journeys with the students. The stories of each of these exemplary women in their respective fields left the entire room inspired and showed the learners what is possible amidst all the societal barriers.
The three days came to an end with an action plan on the agreed upon next steps. Personally, I did not want the conference to end and I realised how much I miss being with students and miss teaching. The slogan – girls arise and become achievers kept reverberating through the walls of the empty training room. Statements like, “I want the government to provide equal opportunities for girl’s education as that is my right” and “I will go home and inform my parents about my rights so that I am given the chance to complete my education” clearly indicated the success of the conference.
New Places New Learnings 
This sounds really cool! I am also at a doing stuff with girls’ education this week…but in the form on a workshop for teachers and administrators about how to better engage their female students in Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Design, and Mathematics (STEAM). I am so happy to see so much gender responsive education and pedagogy happening around the world 🙂
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Kathleen, that’s really great to know. I will be looking forward to your blog post. For the conference here, there were teachers along with the girls as well. The teachers also received some training on how to impart sex education in the class. They were also taught to make low-cost sanitary pads for the girls. It was really interesting.
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It’s so wonderful so read about this initiative here nad the resultant positive impact. I was wondering if female teachers were also made aware of their potential to be role models for their students.
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Indeed Shalini. The initiative is great. Regarding the female teachers, yes they consider themselves as role models. They explicitly mentioned this during my interviews with them. this conference showed the girls what the other possibilities are. Also, this conference was for the Lilongwe district which is why there were female teachers in the schools. The problem of role models is acute in the rural areas where there aren’t many female teachers.
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