Ng’onzini Primary School

THEME: Gender Sensitivity: Girl Child Education • It is common practice for School girls to be forcefully married to elderly men in exchange of dowry and most of the cases involve primary school children. • "It is unfortunate that while other communities are discarding traditions that drag down their socio-economic development, this repugnant cultural practice has refused to die exposing communities to ridicule. It is something that should be stopped because it denies the girl child the right to education." • After realizing that the Kenyan government was taking stringent measures on parents engaging their children in forced marriages, some members of the community often cross into neighboring Tanzania where they perform the marriage rituals before crossing back to Kenya. • The Kenya government has outlawed FGM and its attendant practices and its perpetrators risk being jailed. What makes teenage marriages especially appalling is that it burdens the young girls with responsibilities that they are ill-prepared for. This includes child bearing and the concomitant hustles of taking care of children. • The culture has been a detriment to the girl child and as a result few girls have the urge to continue with their education as they will be married off before they complete their education. • The future of the girl child is therefore threatened and concerted efforts must be made to reverse the worrying trend. • Poverty is a broad-term that describes many circumstances where people lack resources such as money, housing, food, clothing, jobs, and suffer physically, socially, and emotionally from this material deprivation. • Poverty describes a standard of living where a person is unable to afford even a basic diet. International definitions of poverty rely on the classification of the poverty level, which is a level of income below which a person cannot afford to buy all the resources required to live. • Poverty eradication encompasses the will and strategies to stop all people from living in poverty. • The focus will be on education, training and gender sensitivity. Inter cultural exchange is aimed at enabling people to put global awareness and intercultural learning into practice. • This is enhanced through creating awareness through learning themes on global issues. • In so doing it will strengthen participants\' skills in working in community-based organizations actively involved in efforts to alleviate poverty.