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Tendai Rupapa and Paidamoyo Chipunza
FIRST Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa has upped the fight for the girl child as yesterday she met stakeholders at Zimbabwe House in Harare where she expressed her desire to see girls attaining their full potential. She announced plans to launch the “First Lady and the girl child” programme next month.

The programme will see her having interfaces with girls from Grade 6 to Upper Sixth.

It will give girls a platform to share their experiences with the First Lady.

The First Lady intends to fight challenges facing girls like teenage pregnancies, drug abuse and early child marriages.

Yesterday’s meeting was held under the theme “Our girl, our pride, our future, let’s invest in her”.

It was attended by representatives from the ministries of Primary and Secondary Education, Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development, Health and Child Care, Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprise Development and Sport, Arts and Culture.

Civil society organisations and the media also took part.

In her remarks, the First Lady said: “This year one of the key area I am focusing on is the girl child programme. A girl child is facing a number of challenges in her journey of development from infancy to adolescence and to a young mother.

“The girl child is faced with a lot of pressures from different sectors of the society, from within the household to the community and society at large. Our girl-children need extra care and support through a listening ear.”

She said only engagement with the girl child would improve the situation.

“The girl child is more vulnerable. Not that we are to discriminate the boy child but special attention needs to be given to the girl child as the most disadvantaged children are girls. I hereby come up with a programme ‘First Lady and the girl-child’ where I would like to meet girls of school-going age and have an interface with them in an open environment which allows the girls to open up and share their real life experiences,” added the First Lady.

She said the girl child must be empowered.

“The focus would be to come up with social and economic solutions for the girl child in order to improve on their assertiveness, attitude to life, education, life skills as well as making informed decisions and being well disciplined. The girl child is part of our nation’s future citizens and we cannot just watch and expect a good future for them when we do not intervene at this point in time,” said the First Lady.

She said there was need for a paradigm shift in the manner the nation treats the girl child.

“In order for us to attain a prosperous upper-middle income economy by 2030, we need to have a paradigm shift in the way we have been doing business. Engagement with the girl child to hear from them and come up with informed interventions is one way to usher our girls to upper middle income economy by 2030. This can be achieved successfully if we work together as a team and brainstorm on this programme,” said Amai Mnangagwa.

She cited early child marriages, teenage pregnancies, HIV and Aids infections and school drop outs as some of the challenges facing the girl child.

“This is resulting in the girl child’s future being jeopardised and in most cases there are few girls who are getting the opportunity to get out of such pits they would have fallen into. It is therefore critical that we engage our girl child from a tender age and dialogue with them on these issues to come up with practical and lasting solutions,” said Amai Mnangagwa.

She urged coordination among stakeholders in the fight for the rights of the girl child.

“I intend to roll out the first activity of engaging girls of school going age. Society needs to accept that the challenges the girl child is facing need a joint effort of various stakeholders. Together as a team we can make great impact in addressing the challenges being faced by our girls. I am starting the first interface meeting with the girls here in Harare next month. The objective is to raise awareness on the need for the society to see the value of the girl child,” she said.

“This activity marks the beginning of a series of interfaces that would be held countrywide to ensure that all the girls across the country are reached.”

Organisations which attended the meeting pledged support.

African Union Ambassador for ending early child marriages Mrs Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda said the First Lady had set the tone for 2019 in fighting early marriages.

“You have set the tone for 2019 for our intentions, for prioritisation of resources and for implementation of policies,” she said.

Mrs Gumbonzvanda said she was a product of early marriage and urged authorities to stop it.

Principal director in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education Ms Kwadzanai Nyanungo thanked the First Lady for the initiative.

Representative for the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development, Mrs Martha Muguti, said her ministry was committed to addressing challenges facing the girl child.

The challenge include shortage of accommodation for girls at tertiary institutions.

“Let us start by addressing these issues from a family set up. Girls are not born to be married. Parents and guardians must stop commercialising marriage,” she said.

Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development acting secretary Air Commodore Ivan Dumba said his ministry would work towards operationalising the national action plan to end child marriages.

The action plan was launched last month.

It seeks to intensify efforts towards ending early child marriages.