Oxfam on Friday donated 120 bicycles worth K4.7 million to volunteers working in anti sexual and gender-based violence (ASGBV) clubs in Dowa District.<\/p>\n
The donation is part of Oxfam\u2019s new project which is aimed at combating sexual and gender-based violence. Oxfam is implementing the project together with Girls Empowerment Network (Genet) and Centre for Alternatives for Victimised Women and Children (Cavwoc).<\/p>\n
During a handover ceremony held at Chikwawe Primary School in Traditional Authority Chakhaza in Dowa, Deputy Country Director for Oxfam, Lingalireni Mihowa, said the bicycles will easy mobility challenges for volunteers working in ASGBV clubs which the project has established and revived in schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bicycles will help in reaching out to vulnerable pupils that have dropped out or risk dropping out of school due to sexual and gender-based violence related issues,\u201d Mihowa said.<\/p>\n
She said the increase of sexual and gender-based violence cases remains a threat to school going pupils, especially girls.<\/p>\n
The 2016 Malawi Health Demographic Survey shows that 29 percent of young girls between 15 and 19 years are dropping out of school or getting early pregnancies. This is an increase from the 25 percent school drop-out rate a similar study established in 2016.<\/p>\n
According to Mihowa, the statistics are worrisome bearing in mind the existence of progressive policies like the National Gender Policy and the National Girls Education Strategy, which should be addressing challenges affecting the girl child.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to look at what is the drive behind this and research shows that the social norms have not changed. They are still retrogressive, harmful and we need to address the underlying reasons behind that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Volunteers to benefit from the donated bicycles include parents, local initiation counsellors, Parent Teacher Association (PTA) members, mother and father groups and School Management Committee (SMC) members.<\/p>\n
Primary Education Desk Officer for Dowa, Joseph Chafukira received the bicycles on behalf of the volunteers.<\/p>\n
Chafukira said the donation will take the fight against sexual and gender-based violence to another level and help to reduce high school drop-out rates among girls in the district.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oxfam on Friday donated 120 bicycles worth K4.7 million to volunteers working in anti sexual and gender-based violence (ASGBV) clubs in Dowa District. The donation is part of Oxfam\u2019s new project which is aimed at combating sexual and gender-based violence. Oxfam is implementing the project together with Girls Empowerment Network (Genet) and Centre for Alternatives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":43350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43348"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43351,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43348\/revisions\/43351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}