What worries us
Pregnancies among school-age girls in Namibia rose to over 3.600 cases last year, according to official reports. The number rose drastically, particularly between March and September during the school closures. However, these are by no means primarily same-age boys having sexual relations with the girls, but adult men and even relatives, who deliberately seek sexual access to young girls. A major problem is that society regards this and domestic violence, which also increased as a result of the pandemic, as an internal family matter . If a girl or woman courageously approaches the police and wants to file a complaint, she is generally turned away, even in cases of serious abuse and visible injuries.
What steps staff members in the projects do to support girls:
- Regular educational talks are held with children and parents.
- Joint visits to the doctor with a steps trusted teacher to obtain contraceptives. Unfortunately, this too is a major problem: only a few doctors prescribe them, do not have suitable ones in stock, or accuse the girls of behaving too loosely—to put it mildly.
- Unfortunately, there are also isolated cases of pregnancies among schoolgirls in our projects. In Okakarara and Gobabis, the girls who are expecting a child will return to school after giving birth. But this is rather the exception—without steps and the trained teams of Sonja Schneider-Waterberg, Jackie Sanjath and Santiago Narib, who do everything possible to maintain contact with the girls, they too would drop out of school.
What you can do:
Save another girl from dropping out of school with a Guardian Angel sponsorship.
Because the guardian angel children come to the steps projects after school, where in smaller groups and protected spaces they can talk about contraception and other measures.
Help here with a Guardian Angel special donation —with an amount of your choice.
