(SENEGAL) As you probably know, World Renew and its partners in Senegal have worked for years with illiterate adolescent girls in the poorest working-class suburbs of Dakar.
Ndeye (r) and another volunteer acting out a situation |
They are some of the most vulnerable members of Senegal’s very hierarchical society. This adolescent program has helped a whole generation of girls make their voices heard about the issues that affect them, including marriage, children, and health. It has also helped parents and other community members organize to support them.
In the last few years, the adolescent program has focused on countering stigma and discrimination against People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLWA) as part of World Renew’s Embrace AIDS campaign.
Community groups in Senegal are now using materials that the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Senegal (EELS) developed with local community and religious leaders on this topic. This year, the EELS staff is training neighborhood council members and community and religious leaders about organizing their own activities using these materials. As most neighborhood council members are illiterate and don’t usually take on leadership roles, this is a big challenge but also very rewarding work as people discover new strengths and talents.
At the same time, we are also working on new topics. In the coming years we will focus on combatting sexual abuse that is committed against our program participants. In their homes and communities, the girls often have such low status that when they are abused, nothing usually happens.
In their homes and communities, the girls often have such low status that when they are abused, nothing usually happens.
In addition to the fact that police services are often not accessible to poor families in these areas, the perpetrators are also very often uncles or other relatives in the family. Since the family does not want to lose face, the girl is made to keep quiet about what happened. When this happens, the girl does not get any support, and sometimes EELS staff only learn about the events years after they happen.
When we surveyed the program participants, we find that a shockingly high number of them are victims of abuse. They anonymously answer the question, “Have you been sexually abused in the past three months?” At the beginning of the program, about 15% tended to answer yes to this question. But after only eight months of training on reproductive health, confidence, and community action the number of girls reporting abuse went down to 10%. However, because abuse is such a sensitive topic, the program has not addressed it directly for a long time. Now we are developing materials on the topic for all the groups, including participants, neighborhood councils, youth action groups, and community and religious leaders. This year, we will start to use those materials with all of our groups once the program staff has taken abuse and counseling training.
Even before starting the activities, we are noticing that the staff and our volunteers are becoming more attentive to the issue. A few weeks ago, volunteer Ndeye and her mother Aminata, who is a Neighborhood Council member, heard of a girl who had survived an attempted rape by a man who was wellknown in the neighborhood. Because of their connection to EELS, Ndeye and her mother felt they had a responsibility to act, and they went to talk to the girl’s family. They discussed the possible actions the family could take given that they had already talked to the man’s family and pardoned them. Aminata and Ndeye nonetheless encouraged the family to write down the details of the attack in case the man, who had left the neighborhood, harassed the girl again—or worse.
In the coming months, we will be working on supporting Ndeye and other community members when they address sexual harassment of the young women in their neighborhoods. We will offer training in basic counseling skills to peer educators in the adolescent health program, develop discussion guides for community groups, and write a set of guidelines so that people like Aminata and Ndeye have more information and resources to advise girls and their families.
Joys
- In Dakar there is increased community involvement in protecting the most vulnerable community members.
- In Linguere, Mbettite, and Thies, there are new adolescent health groups where illiterate young women can learn about reproductive health and self-worth.
Challenges
- The vulnerability of young illiterate women who live in the poor suburbs of Dakar. Too often they are told to stay quiet.
- For EELS and World Renew to develop appropriate methods for addressing sensitive issues in such a way that the whole community is engaged.
Blessings,
Esther Kühn
Program Consultant
World Renew – Senegal