By Grace Marfo | Teen Girls Club Leader
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Many communities around the world have seen an increase in teenage pregnancy following the interruption of schools during the global pandemic. Ghana recorded over 100,000 cases of teenage pregnancies in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic and associated school closures.
At SHI, we witnessed an increase in teen pregnancies in our partner communities as well. The Teen Girls Club supports young women to pursue formal and informal educational opportunities so they have options and are in a position to make choices about their own lives and futures. Teenage pregnancy can interrupt girls’ dreams for themselves and their futures, and often teenagers are not prepared physically, emotionally, or financially to become parents.
In our quest to find a lasting solution to reduce teenage pregnancies, we have been working closely with various stakeholders within and outside the communities. This report shares ways we engaged the community and the outcomes of that engagement. Content warning: this post addresses sexual assault.
First of all, we talked with the girls to find out the root cause(s) of the rise in teen pregnancies. Based on their responses, we saw the need to meet with the women in their lives, in other words, their mothers. We organized meetings with the mothers and discussed how puberty makes their daughters vulnerable, the kind of help the girls need from the women in their lives during this period, and how moms can provide such support.
Then based on those discussions, it was clear we also needed to involve men and boys within the communities in the fight against teen pregnancy. We also observed that the majority of teen pregnancies involved girls below the age of 16, which makes it a defilement case, and the perpetrators should be subject to criminal action. We wondered why these perpetrators were not being reported, so we sought input from opinion leaders in various communities. It became clear that while people agreed that teenage pregnancy was a problem, most parents are afraid to involve the law since they didn't understand how the law works.
After meeting with these various stakeholder groups, Self-Help International organized community meetings with all stakeholders, and engaged the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) District Coordinator to educate the communities on how, where, and when to report issues of rape, defilement, and any violence against women and girls. The District Coordinator lamented how severe these issues are, shared the importance of reporting and the kind of punishment perpetrators may face. He answered questions posed by various community members. He closed the meeting by notifying the community that now that people are well aware of the laws and consequences, they have a responsibility to report defilement cases, and assured them that reporting would lead to investigation and swift action from the DOVVSU unit.
Lo and behold, a family from Bedabour has demonstrated enough courage to report a man in his early thirties for defiling a 14- year-old girl, who attends school at Bedabour D /A Basic School. When the DOVVSU District Coordinator learned of the allegations, he set his team to arrest the culprit without hesitation. The man confessed to the crime, and has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment with hard labor.
Self-Help has helped the young woman access needed services such as medical attention from a partner nonprofit that specializes in women’s healthcare, offered moral support for her courage to confide in her mother and report the case, and gave financial support to the family for the costs incurred at the police station in the reporting and investigation process. We are also assisting the family to access counseling services.
This action taken by the victim’s family has become a subject of discussion in the entire Bedabour and its surrounding communities. It is clear that DOVVSU will take swift action when necessary. It is hoped that witnessing the follow through by DOVVSU will deter others from committing such a crime, thereby decreasing the incidence of defilement cases and teenage pregnancies in the area.
While we hope the cases reduce such that we are not called upon again, we stand ready to support young women as and when the need arises.
In addition to core programming, gifts made to Self-Help International provide the funds, known as “stakeholder support” to address unanticipated community needs such as this one and to support families at vulnerable times. Help us respond quickly when called upon by making a gift on GivingTuesday, November 29, 2022.
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By Bernice Agyekwena | Communications Manager
By Grace Marfo | Teen Girls Club Officer
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