Are Girls Being Fully Trained To Join The Workforce?

Youth Out Loud - One of the projects equipping the girl child

By Cynthia Chithila

In Malawi, like many African countries, there are a lot of traditional beliefs that put the girl child at a disadvantage. When a family has a boy and a girl, for example, parents mostly choose to send the boy to school while leaving the girl at home. This relegates the girl child to the marginal position which in turn leaves her powerless and unproductive.

In recent years, Malawi has made serious strides towards the empowerment of the girl child. It has embraced different bursary offering institutions to help and encourage girls achieve their dreams so that they become successful citizens. But the question still remains; Are these girls being fully prepared to join the ever demanding workforce?

Looking at the strides Malawi is taking in the Education Sector, there is hope that girls are being fully equipped to join the ever growing workforce. For example, the government is building Technical Colleges which are aimed at equipping the youth with different skills. Interestingly, girls are encouraged to go into these colleges and many are indeed trained in such colleges.

In secondary schools, the government has also changed the curriculum which gives a chance to students to choose a predetermined route for their studies. In this curriculum, a student chooses either the Science or the Humanities route. In essence, this helps the students to have a full understanding of their area of concentration. This is relevant because the global world is increasingly becoming a world where specialisation matters most. With the increased enrollment of girls in secondary schools due to bursaries, we are assured that the girl child is also receiving the necessary training to prepare her to enter the workforce? We are assured the girl child is part of this trained workforce.

To support this, there are more girls nowadays in the industry than was the case with a decade ago, example. I also was privileged to meet some girls in Lilongwe area 12 few weeks ago. After my little investigation, I was told that these girls are fresh graduates from different universities in Malawi. I was told that they are part of the graduates who have been taken by government on "internships " (my first time to hear the word) and that most of them were going to government offices by then. This then simply means the child is being fully prepared to join the workforce since through these internships, I am told, they are going to learn different skills and expertise. In addition to this,  Timveni with support from UNICEF  is implementing a project which aims at equipping the youth with journalism skills through a project they called Youth Out Loud (Achinyamata Yankhulani).

In this program, a lot of girls from different secondary schools in Mangochi are also included. All these are efforts to train the girl child so that she is ready to join the workforce.

**Cynthia Chithila is a Form 3 student at St. Michael's Girls Secondary School**