Reaching Out-of-School Teen Moms with Non-Formal Education in eSwatini

• In Event: World Education’s DREAMS Innovation Challenge Program: promoting girls’ education through prevention and response interventions in eSwatini, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania

Proposal

In eSwatini, the girls’ primary school enrollment rate is quite high at 86%. However, girls’ secondary school enrollment rates drop to 67% for lower secondary, and 47% in upper secondary. Relatedly, 22.1% of adolescent girls give birth before age 18, greatly contributing to school drop-out. Virtually no educational opportunities and few social support structures exist for these adolescent mothers and wives. With the added burden of eSwatini’s 26.5% HIV prevalence rate—the highest in the world, which rises even higher to 31% for women—and higher still for women ages 18-19, at 38%, young women face huge barriers to success and wellbeing. The out-of-school cohort remains among the hardest to reach with services.

WEI/Bantwana’s DREAMS Innovation Challenge project in eSwatini targeted nearly 300 out-of-school teen moms (ages 15 – 24) over two years in two districts: Siphofaneni and Sithobela. The project provided these at-risk girls with a Mentor Program, access to Non-Formal Education (NFE), Early Childhood Stimulation (ECS) training, and a social and protective assets program (Protect Our Youth) to prevent unsafe sex and teenage pregnancy, develop skills to navigate gender norms, develop a 5-year life plan, and increase overall resilience. WEI/Bantwana’s comprehensive program, with intense and targeted supports, proved crucial for keeping girls matriculated and on-course: 100% of girls sat for their end-of-year exams in Year 1, and 100% passed their mid-year mock Swaziland General Certificate of Secondary Education examinations in year 2. The project has earned attention from USAID’s Office of U.S. AIDS Global Coordinator -- and additional funding that will continue this work and connect this cohort of girls to tertiary institutions.
This eSwatini presentation will focus on the critical need to reach teenage mothers with a comprehensive, layered package that accounts for the whole person, including psychosocial support needs. Pregnancy pushes young girls into an early and unwanted womanhood, leaving them alienated from their childless peers and targeted with societal and cultural stigma. The power dynamics that exist between young mothers and their partners create severe barriers to reaching them. Further, poverty and limited socioeconomic opportunities create a pressurized situation for these girls, who often lack familial support. Successfully engaging teen mothers and retaining them on an educational pathway is extremely complex, requiring extensive resources and a layered approach that addresses numerous support needs, and innovations to aggressively circumvent barriers. While efforts should be sought to support teen mothers for a ‘second chance’ – at life, through education -- there is a greater need and urgency to find innovative and effective strategies to retain girls in schools, and to review policies and laws focusing on out of school girls in order to address challenges affecting them and the impact on society.

Author

• Collen Masibhera, Bantwana Initiative of World Education