Promoting Safe Spaces for Adolescent Girls

Girls’ club activities monitoring was focus on promoting safe space for girls in school. The monitoring was done in 16 programme schools. These includes, ponaa JHS, Bolni, kukuo, tadamuni, our lady, EP primary, kanjo, montanaya, lungni, nakpa, diapah, juo, juasheiyili, kassimiya, nassamba, and nakpayili. In all, 560 girl’s club member’s age 12-17years were interacted by Songtaba by the monitoring team at the communities mentioned above.

The monitoring revealed various approaches and strategies employed by teacher mentors  to promote safe space for girls as they patiently wait for the introduction and implementation of violence box system of tracking and reporting cases of violence in school.

Many teacher mentors took terms to educate girl’s club members on different ways of reporting violence cases in and out of school. Members were sensitized by their mentors on the existence and operation of some structures established and trained by songtaba to help address issues of violence in and out of schools. Structures discussed were Parent Teacher Association (PTA) executives, School management committee (SMC) Executives, teacher mentors, girl’s club executives and community base advocacy teams (COMBAT).

 According to the mentors, these are established structure that has the capacity to help promote safe space for girls, hence they should not hesitate in reporting issues that affect teaching and learning as well cases of right abuse to them. Girl’s club members were entreated to make better use of COMBAT at the community level. COMBAT according to the mentors are selected stakeholders at the communities who are trained by songtaba and committed in promoting and protecting rights of the child, most especially the girl child. COMBAT deal with cases of violence through the support of legally established human rights institutions such as Commission on human rights and administrative justice(CHRAJ), social welfare, legal Aid, and domestic violence and victims support unit(DOVVSU) of Ghana police service.

In all the schools visited, girls club member were excited and asked useful questions to clarify themselves for a comprehensive understanding on promoting safe space for themseves.