Girls on Spotlight Scholarships dream big

When Ellen Tembo was selected to Mpatsa Secondary School in Nsanje, it was bittersweet for her widowed mother.

"About 40 of us made it from Mpatsa Primary School. But while some parents were throwing parties for my peers, my mother could only congratulate me. She appeared worried as she was struggling to feed the family. She didn't know where my fees would come from," recalls the 14-year-old Form Two girl.

The woman had raised four girls and two boys single-handedly since 2015 when Ellen's father died. The girl was six years old and in Standard One when she lost the breadwinner, a civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture.

Her secondary education got off to a turbulent start when she was sent back home as her mother did not pay fees on time.

The widow was forced to borrow MKW 20,000 from neighbors, but only after Ellen had spent a week out of school.

"I wept because my friends kept learning while I was idle at home. I feared for my future. My mother was doing everything to keep me in school, but it wasn't easy for her to choose between educating me and feeding my family," says Ellen.

The fourth-born child in a family of six says she saw herself hitting a snag like her first-born sister, who failed the Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) examinations because she was constantly forced out of school to fetch fees.

But Ellen weeps no more. She is among 16 girls at her school on scholarships from the Spotlight Initiative funded by the European Union in partnership with the United Nations to ensure girls learn and thrive until their dreams come true.

Malawi is one of the eight African nations implementing the UN flagship initiative to end violence against women and girls. This includes child marriage, which remains rampant in Nsanje and other target hotspots in Nkhata Bay, Mzimba, Ntchisi, Dowa, and Machinga districts, six years after Parliament unanimously amended the Constitution of Malawi in 2017 to outlaw marriage involving children aged below 18.

The UNICEF scholarships benefit schoolgirls disproportionately at risk of dropping out due to poverty.

UNICEF also supported the construction of a 76-bed hostel for girls prone to sexual violence due to long walks to school and created youth clubs that mentor boys to safeguard girls' rights, well-being, and dreams.

"Since I started receiving the scholarship, I have vowed to work hard to achieve my dreams and pass well because I have no excuse to quit. I want to lift my mom, siblings, and myself out of poverty," says the girl, who aspires to become a nurse.

Ellen is one of 52 girls in a class of 107 learners at a school where only 24 girls reached Form Four this year, down from 50 when they were in Form One half a decade ago.

The scholarships are helping keep poor girls in school, which headteacher Fred Kaligomba considers a safe space to safeguard girls from rampant teen pregnancies and child marriages.

Each girl on the bursary received tuition, 10 hardcover notebooks, 10 exercise books, a uniform, a pair of shoes, a calculator, 10 pens, 10 pencils, and six sanitary pads. Form Two and Four girls receive a top-up for examination fees.

"I thank UNICEF and the Spotlight Initiative for the scholarships, which help keep disadvantaged girls in school at a time when many poor girls are forced to quit school for illegal marriages and risky sexual transactions that only put their lives and futures in danger," he said.

The teacher, who has been in charge of the rural secondary school for five years, says the education support has saved the girls from sexual rights violations that fuel school dropout rates, child marriages, teen pregnancies, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

"Without these scholarships, most of the recipients would have dropped out of school to marry, as do most of their peers in this area where girls marry young due to widespread poverty, parental indifference, and traditional practices that appear to condone it instead of protecting children and keeping them learning until they are old enough to decide when to marry," he states.

And the annual count of girls quitting school has dropped to seven this year from nine in the 2022 academic year and 11 in 2021 when Kaligomba arrived at Mpatsa CDSS.

"This represents a rate of two girls saved every year since I came. The number could be small as we want every girl to stay in school and achieve their dreams, but every girl saved from early pregnancy and marriage is a cause for joy to us," he states.

The school also works with concerned mothers from surrounding communities, who offer learners pep talks on the importance of education and help dropouts re-enroll. The major beneficiaries are girls rescued from marriage and idle life after falling pregnant, a common challenge in Malawi. Nearly half of the girls in the country marry before reaching the legal minimum marriageable age of 18, and one in three become a mother by their 19th birthday.

Ellen is lucky to have been selected for the scholarship after her mother opened up to the headteacher and Spotlight coordinator about the struggles to keep the girl in school.

"I now have every reason to stay in school until I can achieve my dreams and make my mother smile. The scholarship has relieved my hardship and my mom's worries as she now uses her little income to care for my siblings," she says.