Promoting Safe Spaces for Adolescent Girls

Promotion girl’s personal hygiene at the Community level

Girl personal hygiene is an important event in the development stage of the girl child. Realizing the need for parents to know and support their girl child at this critical developmental period in their lives. Songtaba and their partners launched a vigorous community level education on girl’s personal hygiene promotion, by distributing sanitary pad to girls from 12 to 18 years of age while educating parents to adopt and practice same to promote safe space for their wards in school.

The Executive Director of Songtaba took parents through special needs of teenage girls at some point in their lives. If such needs are not provided, it demoralizes the girl’s child in life, which subsequently affects her academic performance. Hence she encouraged parents at the programme communities to take up their responsibilities for the success of our girls in future. About 579 teenage girls benefited from this package in Nanumba district.

Failure of most parents to live up to their responsibilities causes these girls to absent themselves from school for no fault of theirs but negligence of parents in ensuring their safety in school. Teenage girls who experience mensuration, needs hygiene materials to ensure safety and to prevent them from being ridicule by colleagues in their menstrual periods. Most parents do not pay critical attention to this developmental stage in their children lives. The unfortunate girls are left at their own mercy to take care of themselves. Girls who cannot acquire sanitary pads nor have any alternative skills soil themselves in the event of this experience, in the midst of colleagues at school. These victims sometime dropped out of school to prevent future shame and disgrace in schools.

The school governance and infrastructure system in most part of Ghana has not provided safe spaces for girls to change themeselves in the event they are in schools and suddenly experiencing their mensurartion. As part of the campaign is engaging local authorities and the Ghana education service to ensure that schools are gender friendly by providing these safe spaces for girls.