The HIV intervention strategy will use education to reduce the girls’ vulnerability to the virus. [Photo/standaredmedia.co.ke]
A non-governmental has embarked on a programme of returning teenage girls in Ugenya sub-county to school as a way of reducing their vulnerability to HIV infections.
The Girl Child Network which is working with the office of Rozella Rasanga, Siaya Governor's spouse, and other stakeholders in a programme dubbed ‘Dreams Innovation Challenge’, targets girls who are aged between 15 to 24 years.
According to the Dreams Innovation Challenge Project Coordinator Hadley Muchela, this is an HIV intervention strategy that uses education to reduce the girls’ vulnerability to the virus.
Muchela said that under the two-year programme which aims at returning at least 200 young girls to school in Sihayi and Nyalenya sub-locations, the girls are put in bridging centers for about six months before they are returned to school.
Muchela disclosed that the bridging centers are set in a manner that they have secondary school teachers to provide an accelerated curriculum to the girls and counselors to give them psycho-social support.
He was speaking when the Girl Child Network team led by the Executive Director Mercy Musomi visited Siaya Governor’s wife’s office.
The organization’s monitoring and evaluation officer Ms. Damaris Karung’o said that they have managed to return about 95 girls to schools across the two sub-locations.
She revealed that GCN enrolled 160 girls at their bridging centers in Sihayi and Nyalenya at the inception of the project, and has so far managed to return the 95 girls to school as at January this year.
Mrs. Rasanga welcomed the partnership, noting that it is a concept that will give hope to the girls of the county that they can still get a second chance to proceed with their education even after dropping out of school due to one reason or the other.