•PARTICIPATING girls receive educational gifts after the camp.

BY TERENCE MUSUKU –

FIRST Quantum Minerals has reached 100 girls through its annual Girls empowerment camp called Girls Leading Our World (Glow), purposely for empowering the vulnerable girls aged between 12 and 18, with life-skills and health-education.
This year’s programme, the second to hold since the scheme was introduced last year, drew the girls from 14 schools in Solwezi surrounding operations of Kansanshi Mining PLC and Kalumbila Minerals; such as Kisasa, Chitungu, Kalumbila, Shinengene, Jiundu, Musele, Kankozhi, Musangezhi, Chovwe, Munkozhi, Mbonge, Kyafukuma, Mushitala and Kabwela. The camp cost FQM more than K110,000.
To reflect the due importance attached to the empowerment of the girl-child, the one week camp tutorship was held at Trident College, the academic show-piece of secondary school offering up to A-level education. Among the 100 girls four were girls on a re-entry programme.
The camp was held, as Gertrude Musunka, the FQM Programmes and Projects Advisor explains, to empower the girls with life skills and the vital education needed to protect them from sexual debauchery, early pregnancy and early marriages.
With and from education, in the face of increasing breakdown of Zambian eugenic family values accelerated by adoption of foreign Western culture, the tutored girls are now well-equipped to defend their nubile well-being.
Speaking with a motherly disposition, Ms Musunka notes: “Our teen girls find themselves pre-disposed to corollaries such as HIV/AIDS bane, maternal complications, gender-based violence and perpetual poverty.”
Overly, the girl empowerment programme run by FQM has a unique pragmatic approach, and is all “about empowering the girls to be the best they can ever be, by motivating them towards formal education, as a tool for sustainable personal growth and the best health outcome,” she says.
Above all considerations, it goes without saying that an educated girl or woman is capable of making fruitful and better health decisions for herself and her family.
TUTORED
The girls, accompanied by their teachers, were tutored in career guidance by qualified resource personnel from FQM, reputed institutions, educationists from Government and non-governmental organizations.
Outstanding in the FQM girl empowerment programme is their application of deductive tutorship rather than lecturing in the camp-sessions. This entails allowing the girls to reveal the ordeals they face in their day to day lives such as the unsolicited attention from men.
In return, the mentors came up with counter-suggestions on how to parry or effectively react against the advances from unwanted tempters.
Three of the mentors from the United States Peace Corps?Ashley Ellis (rural education development), Kristi Kumorek (rural education development) and Brian Dodd (rural agriculture promotion) featured too well on dynamics of men-women phenomenal equality.
Coming from the United States of America, a country where women empowerment originated and is now deep-rooted, they strongly urged the girls, tellingly: “Just say, no, no and no again to your love-seekers. Give them no room to persist, the way we do in the US.”
“You are born with talking organs,” they added in a chorus, “but you hardly know the power of your voice.”
WELL-MEANING
Solwezi District Commissioner, Crispin Likando, reminded the girls in clear-cut terms that the Government, is well-meaning and well-intentioned concerning the promotion of women empowerment in Zambia.
As proven evidence, he said, Government has appointed more women to “high positions in the history of Zambia such as the Inspector-General of police and the Anti-Corruption Commission Director-General, among others.”
Chief Kapijimpanga of the Kaonde people graced a session, adding royal impetus to the camp.
Making self-confession, Ophilia Timwanga, 18, who is a grade eight school-girl from Chovwe, said after the girl empowerment tutorship, she has now gained self-confidence and ability to value formal education.
“I am now able to abstain from early sex indulgence, able to choose education-loving friends as well as saying no to sugar-daddies,” she said.
Charity Mumba, 17, a grade 11 pupil at Mufumbwe High School, who came in as a junior/peer counsellor, echoed in support of Ophilia that “During the tutorship sessions, we revealed and shared and exchanged views on youthful girls living at the mercy of money-possessing characters.
“But now henceforth, from the powerful counselling received, we have been empowered to complete our academic education. We now feel, as if we have become new-born girl-children.”– Feature courtesy of SUMA SYSTEMS.