Theme “GENDER EQUALITY TODAY FOR A SUSTAINABLE TOMORROW”
This day was celebrated at Kamira Town Council in Luwero District on 14th April, 2022.
TEEN MOTHERS AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH PROGRAM organized this event to carry out advocacy against teenage pregnancy and give household items to a number of young mothers below the age of 18years who are on our program plus empowerment. We appealed to Government of Uganda through the minister for Kampala Honorable Minista Kabanda who was Chief Guest to pay much attention to health and social needs of huge number of teen mothers in greater districts of Luwero, Nakaseke and Nakasongola. It’s on record that Luwero district alone registered 25000 teenage pregnancies between 2020-2021 Covid period, of these we only have 500 on our program but we hope to increase on that number steadily when we get more resources. For these girls on our program, we have managed to impact their lives in different aspects of life:, we give them counseling, mental health distress management, we give them sexuality Education, we have taken some of them to skilling courses like hair dressing, tailoring .Note we only take these who have kids of two years and above for skilling courses, these with very young babies have to first breast feed, we are also engaging these young adults in child development programs. In partnership with Mildmay Uganda, we do HIV testing and counseling, also do referrals to these girls who are found HIV positive to start lifesaving drugs. We have also enrolled many of these young mothers to family planning methods available in order to have a planned family. We have given startup capital to some girls and their caregivers like showing machines, hairdressers and some other small funds to begin glossaries. In our strategic Plan we would like to begin enrolling some of these young girls back to formal Education given the fact that most of them were bright in class and are willing to go back to school post delivery period but 99% of them were neglected and abandoned by their education sponsors who were their parents in most cases.