A third year comes to an end for female scholars

7 August 2024

The project aiming to provide adolescent high school girls in rural Senegal with access to education and leadership skills to become change agents in their community successfully closed out its third year. More specifically 150 girls, from villages across the Fatik region, who were at risk of dropping out of school were provided with scholarships. Scholarships covered school fees, personal hygiene items, books, clothing, living expenses and school supplies. The girls received additional tutoring from December 2023 through 2024 June ensuring they passed the national exams. In August 2023, WGEP hosted two weeks of free day-camp activities for the students where they participated in sports, arts and crafts activities, and conducted community clean-up activities During the 2023-2024 school year, WGEP hosted 15 reproductive health workshops that reached 167 girls. Students in elementary and middle school attended these workshops to learn about puberty, contraception and STIs, building their knowledge and confidence in reproductive health matters to help ensure that they remain healthy and stay in school. In April 2024, a select group of young emerging leaders in the “Our Sisters Lead” initiative participated in a weekend leadership retreat. Over the course of two weekends, 124 young women and 26 young men also attended workshops on topics that they themselves identified as important, including environmental stewardship, substance abuse and the prevention of gender-based violence. Since the retreat, they have been holding small community conversations, larger scale community meetings, and radio programs to raise awareness on these topics and apply their leadership skills to bring about change in their communities. As a part of the Our Sisters Lead program, a workshop on positive masculinity was offered to boys participating in the leadership program and men in the community. The objective of this workshop was to engage men and boys as allies in the struggle for women’s rights. The 25 male participants committed to supporting women and girls, to working to prevent violence against women and to raising awareness about the importance of this approach by serving as role models to other men and boys in the community.