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Minister Chikukwa (fourth from left) with Teenage Girls Care Trust officials

Peter Tanyanyiwa Cool Lifestyle Correspondent
Newly found trust, Teenage Girls Care Africa’s (TGCA) primal mandate will be to empower underprivileged girls, this is according to the trust’s executive director Jacob Simoyi who was speaking at the launch of the organisation held at Long Cheng Plaza recently.

Minister of State for Harare Metropolitan Miriam Chikukwa was the guest of honour at the event. The Minister commended the leadership at Teenage Girls Care Africa for launching such a noble initiative as teenage years are very crucial in every girl’s life. She herself began her political career in those very same teenage years.

She highlighted that when young girls were in their teens they faced many problems and some of them tended to fall victim to unwanted pregnancies and drug habits because of peer pressure.

Even though the onus was put on the girl child, the minister said that the boy child should also not be neglected as they are also abused and face the same problems as the girl child. “I commend the leadership at TGCA for coming up with this noble initiative to mentor and support young girls so they may realise their dreams.

“I am pleased that you will be addressing issues such as forced and child marriages, which in most cases find girls married to older man and have to drop out of school, so this initiative will go a long way in curbing teenage pregnancies. “This organisation’s activities are in line with the goals and objectives of our economic blueprint Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation Zim-Asset, under the social service and poverty eradication cluster,” said Chikukwa.

Teenage Girls Care Africa Executive director Jacob Simoyi said the organisation will mainly be focused on girl-related issues and helping underprivileged girls access health care. “Our trust is centered on teenage girls care, especially the underprivileged, we are hoping to bring an end to child marriages, and we also want to help in ending child abuse cases.

We want to provide sanitary wear, we have a project where we will be teaching girls how to make re-usable sanitary wear which they can use for up to ten years. “We are basically concerned with providing health care for the teenage girls, however we will be having a series of workshops to educate young girls the dangers of child marriages. We realised that poverty is the main reason for early child marriages but we want the girls to have quality education and healthcare,” said Simoyi.

Teenage Girls Care Africa will be helping teenage girls deal with their problems they face including sanitary wear, social welfare, child abuses and they also hope to address the drug related issues.

Meanwhile the organisation is set to host workshops beginning of next month with a major boost partnership with some embassies and diasporian links. “Right now our main focus is to have a workshop that will empower the teenagers and community understand us.

We are in talks with some reputable organisations, business people and embassies to come and assist us in this fight. “We need to unite for a noble cause and hence we eradicate a problem,” said the director.

He said they also have something for June 16, a day celebrated by African child and are attending the local celebrations.