25 January 2018

A non-governmental organization has embarked on a programme of re-enrolling teenage girls in the sub-county of Ugenya to school as a way of reducing their vulnerability to HIV infection. The Girl Child Network works with the DREAMS Innovation Challenge programme, which targets girls between 15-24 years. According to the DREAMS project coordinator, Hadley Muchela, this is an HIV intervention strategy that uses education to reduce girls' vulnerability to the virus. Muchela said that under the two-year programme which aims at returning at least 200 young girls to school in Sihayi and Nyalenya sub-locations, the girls are put in bridging centers for about six months before they are returned to school. Muchela disclosed that the bridging centers are set in a manner that they have secondary school teachers to provide an accelerated curriculum to the girls and counselors to give them psycho-social support. The organization’s monitoring and evaluation officer Ms. Damaris Karung’o said that they have currently managed to return about 95 girls to schools across the two sub-locations. This partnership will give hope to girls of the country that they can still proceed with their education and prevent HIV. 

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