Soft skills training offering a lifeline for out-of-school adolescents in Kalungu District
Social isolation cornered Kate into forging relationships with the wrong people. At 16, she got pregnant, but the man responsible fled. With support from her mother, she delivered a baby boy.
Kate Babirye, 20, and Jamidah Babirye, 13, are twins from different sets. Both were born with physical and learning disabilities that negatively impacted their opportunity to access education services.
The distance from their home in Lwabenge Sub-county to the nearest school is nearly 7 kilometres of Murram. Without school, the twins’ social and psychological well-being deteriorated.
“Without friends to play with, they always felt isolated. They are each other’s best friend. Even when I encourage them to invite their friends over or go and play with them, they never do,” their mother, Zulaika Nabukenya, says.
Social isolation cornered Kate into forging relationships with the wrong people. At 16, she got pregnant, but the man responsible fled. With support from her mother, she delivered a baby boy.
Not far from the twins’ home is another gory case of 17-year-old Charity (not real names), who has a hearing impairment and lives with her mother in Kisagazi village, Kyamulibwa sub-county. The duo worked in the coffee plantation of their neighbour, the village’s local defence officer, Joseph Kassaga.
While picking coffee one evening, Kassaga attacked Charity. Unable to make an alarm, he took advantage of her disability and defiled her. Even worse, her mother, who does not understand sign language did not pick up any clues of the abuse. She realised months later when early signs of pregnancy started manifesting.
“My girl was always on her feet by 6 a.m., but suddenly, she was often weak, dozing under the sun and having morning sickness. I took her to Kyamulibwa Health Centre IV for a medical check. That is when I learnt that she was pregnant.”
Puzzled by how this could have happened, she reached out to the village parasocial worker, who escalated the matter to Brian Kasumba, the Kalungu District senior probation and social welfare officer, who quickly engaged the services of a sign language interpreter. Through his services, Charity narrated her ordeal and led investigators to her perpetrator, who was arrested, charged and has since been committed to the High Court in Masaka for trial.
Meanwhile, Charity gave birth to a baby boy and they both continue to receive multisectoral protection services of legal, financial, health and psychosocial support from UNICEF. This is part of the robust case management system of parasocial workers, community development officers, a probation and social welfare officer and justice for children coordinators – part of the 534 community and school based social service workforce trained under the CLEAR Supply Chains Project – Ending Child Labour in Supply Chains: Addressing the Root Causes of Child Labour through an Area-Based Approach.
The project, co-funded by the European Union and supported by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Trade Centre (ITC) aims to, among other things, equip adolescents with life skills and provides remedial support to affected children through a structured case management system.
ILO brings expertise in labour standards and supports the integration of child-labour prevention into national labour market policies and enforcement mechanisms. The ITC works with businesses to align coffee sector practices with international trade standards that respect child rights while FAO contributes agricultural expertise to promote sustainable farming practices that reduce reliance on child labour and improve livelihoods for farming families.
Life skills training
Charity and the twins; Kate and Jamidah are among the hundreds of out-of-school adolescents who have attended the life skills training aimed at developing a set of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values they need to form and pursue positive goals, cope with challenges, form healthy relationships and be active and enterprising citizens in their communities.
According to Derrick Onzi, the national trainer for life skills at the Private Education Development Network (PEDN), these trainings target adolescents in and out of school between 10 – 19 years, where they’re organised in clubs and community groups with ‘soft skills’ that enable them to be entrepreneurial and self-reliant.
“Life skills are not limited to hands-on skills such as knitting, hairdressing and carpentry. The Life Skills Toolkit focuses on developing 10 core competencies which experts believe that when mastered, will ensure an adolescent is destined for success. These include identity and self-esteem, cooperation and teamwork, critical thinking and decision making, communication and expression, coping with stress and managing emotions, empathy and respect, problem solving and managing conflict, creativity and innovation, hope for the future and goal-setting and leadership and influence,” Derrick explains.
In a five-day training held at St. Balikuddembe Secondary School, more than 40 teachers and 25 community social service facilitators from the sub-counties of Kyamulibwa and Lwabenge were equipped on how to deliver the competency-based modules and lessons from the Life Skills Toolkit to their respective clubs. To date, 40 out-of-school adolescents have been equipped with knowledge and skills to build agency, in making informed decisions and advocating for themselves.
The life skills training has ignited a desire within Charity and the twins to take up vocational education, but they are held back by a lack of school fees. Kate wants to pursue a career in hairdressing while her sister Jamidah prefers crocheting and knitting. All three girls have been recommended by the district community services department for remedial support by the project.
With UNICEF’s support, Charity, her baby boy and her mother have been moved from Kisagazi village for their safety after the social worker intimated that the perpetrator, despite being in jail, was using his influence in the community to threaten their lives. This follows the gruesome murder of Charity’s 10-year-old sister by unknown assailants earlier this year.
