Kuwa Girls initiative

Changemaker: Veronica Musa

Country of Implementation: Zambia

Chipulukusu community is the second-largest densely populated community in Zambia with a population of over 50,000 people living in a low-income area. , Chipulukusu has faced challenges of the high prevalence of early teenage pregnancies and marriages which has had a very negative impact on the community in terms of social-economic status and public health. To solve this problem, Veronica Musa and her team embarked on different projects and research which reviewed that one of the major causes of early teen pregnancies and engagement into marriage if they fell pregnant is a lack of information on the impacts of early teenage pregnancies and lack of life-sustaining skills to make them independent from exploitation from some community members. Veronica and the team developed a project to establish a skills school where they would train young women and teen mothers on different skills like tailoring and designing, baking and catering, reading and writing, computer lessons, entrepreneurship, and agricultural science essentials. The project will impact women to be independent and free from exploitation while proving as a self-sustaining project through proceeds from the product sales generated from the different aspects of the skills school. The school aims to train 150 young women in a period of 6 months and empower 30 young women with seed capital loans for any entrepreneur project after the skills training. Through this project, Veronica and the team continue to air out their advocacy against early teen pregnancies and also educate young teens on sexual reproductive health to have a community awareness of their reproductive health challenges and also a community where young women acquire a certain level of life-sustaining skills without engaging into early teen pregnancies.