The event took place in Musanze district yesterday and coincided with awarding girls that demonstrated the best performance during previous national examinations, girl rights clubs, cooperatives fighting against malnutrition, stunted growth among children and unexpected pregnancies among teens.
It was organized in collaboration with Imbuto Foundation.
The 3-year long campaign will feature messages transmitted through artistic expressions depicting the potential of girls, social media platforms, media, opinion leaders, youth organizations and different clubs at schools.
Throughout the campaign girls will be capacitated in five pillars including building capacity and confidence in decision making, rights to work, live and respect.
It was launched on 10th November 2018 at International level.
Awardees have told IGIHE that the recognition encouraged them to do more ensuring girls rights to all.
“We communicate girls’ rights through songs and dances. We have received clothes among other items empowering us to work better. We worked with Plan International and brought some girls back to school and integrated others into families,” said Naomi Mukantaganda representing one of the girls’ rights clubs.
Delphine Mukaneza representing the group of women involved in fighting malnutrition and unexpected pregnancies said “We have so far received training from Plan International to fight against malnutrition, stunted growth, and unexpected pregnancies. We did it and bore fruits. The Rwf 500,000 award we have received will help us to buy sewing machines, increase savings and advance livelihoods.”
Country Director of Plan International Rwanda, William Mutero said they target to expose girls to unrestrained rights.
“Our objective is to strive for unrestrained girl’s equality increasing presence in all decision making positions and execute similar tasks to boys,” he said.
“We train them on job creation and want girls to inch out of bad history connected to them through exposing their excellent performance. We are confident to attain it in cooperation with the government of Rwanda,” added Mutero.
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Soraya Hakuziyaremye requested participants of the event to resist whatever comes up to tamper girl’s progress.
“It is good that we strive for girl ’s equal rights for all but there are still obstacles hindering their rights that I want to collaboratively eradicate. These include seeking the solution to teen’s pregnancy, fighting against stunted growth among children, increased hygiene in families, solving domestic conflicts and improving girl’s performance at school. Girl’s rights will be possible if these issues are fixed,” she said.
A total of Rwf 500 million will be spent on implementing the campaign.
Plan International operates within 77 countries worldwide including Rwanda. It has so far awarded 1.2 million girls with outstanding performance in national examinations.
It also supports over 1000 cooperatives involved in fighting against malnutrition and stunted growth and girls rights’ clubs in different schools. It has activities in 12 districts in Rwanda.
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