Empowered to Learn Again: Amissina’s Story
“I dropped out of school to earn money for the family,” tells Amissina.
Impire community, Metuge district, Cabo Delgado - Perched on a hillside surrounded by tall corn stalks, a traditional mud-and-stick hut in Impire bustles with the sounds of children. In the shade outside, 15-year-old Amissina Rafael stirs a bubbling pot while keeping an eye on her three younger brothers. Her warm smile belies the weight she carries.
“I dropped out of school to earn money for the family," she says. “Our mother is sick, and we have no father. My little brothers are too young to work, and they go to school. I am the only provider in this house, so I need to work to buy food for the family.”
Their mother, Fatima Ussene, 35, lives with a disability that prevents her from walking and working. After their father died, the family’s survival depended on Amissina. Each day, she ventured into the forest to collect sticks and gather sand to sell along the roadside.
“I would get up very early and go into the forest to gather wooden sticks that people use to build houses. Then I would stand on the road until I sold them,” she says.
The early starts and long hours made attending school impossible.
Everything changed when AVSI, with support from UNICEF, introduced Amissina to a local child-friendly space. There, she began to rediscover parts of herself she had set aside.
“My daily life is being an adult. But every time I go to the child-friendly space, I get to be a teenager,” she says. “I love playing games with other people my age and forgetting about adult life.”
She also began attending economic empowerment sessions, where she learned how to weave, cook, and make textiles.
“My favourite thing to do is to make ceramics from mud. I can make beautiful things,” she says with a spark of pride.
The new skills provided her with more reliable and less physically demanding sources of income, giving her the opportunity to reimagine her future. She is now back in school, enrolled in the sixth grade. “I am happy to be back in school. My favourite subject is mathematics as it helps me to be good with the money for my family,” she says.
She still helps at home and contributes to the family’s income, but now she does so with the confidence that comes from learning.
“In the future, I would like to be a teacher”
From collecting sticks to solving equations, Amissina’s journey is a reminder of how comprehensive support can unlock a young person’s potential and bring a family one step closer to a more secure tomorrow.
With the support of AVSI and UNICEF, and thanks to generous funding from the Government of Germany and UNICEF’s Today and Tomorrow Initiative (TTI), more girls like Amissina are gaining the skills, support and hope they need to return to school and rebuild their futures.
