Promoting access to education for children

Since Octocer 2024 our youth coordinator started liasing with school authorities to book appointments to visit schools, 2 schools have been visited namely Limbe Community Day Secondady School and Chitawira Primary school.

Though our interactions with Chitawira Primary  and Limbe Community Day Secondary schools epilepsy clubs have been revamped, learners were oriented on what epilepsy is. At Chitawira Primary School a total of 90 students were engaged, their age ranges are 5 to 8. It was imperative that this exercise was carried out as some of the club members we had passed their Primary junior Certifificate and are now in secondary school.

The formation of the epilepsy support groups is aimed at creating young advocates who will speak on behalf of their peers with epilepsy and aswell to amplify the voices of young men and women with epilepsy in advocating for their rights at school level.

LESSONS LEARNT

• Students laughed upon hearing the word during one of our visits with one of the schools, this is a clear sign that stigma exists in the schools and that there is work to be done to dradually change the mindset of the youth.

WAY FORWARD

• We plan to reutinely engage young men and women with epilepsy in schools to ensure continuity of our awareness initiatives with schools

CHALLENGES

• We have not began to start implementing the project in its impact area which is Chileka as we have not yet finished raising project funds.
• Some learners especially in Primary school are now in secondary school which meant that we had to start the process of forming the clubs again and learners had to be oriented and introduced to epilepsy again.
• Was unable to engage parents and chiefs due to limited resources

RECOMMENDATIONS

• To reutinely visit schools with the aim of raising epilepsy awareness and to ensure the sustainability of the epilepsy clubs
• To create incentives to be used during our engagement with learners to motivate them and foster continued engagement i.e games, epilepsy quiz, gifts for those that do well during quiz
• To annually revamp epilepsy clubs 

Links:

• Project URL for Global Giving