The United States Embassy recently donated a quantity of baby and hygiene kits to 20 teenage mothers in a move to have them re-integrated into the school system.
The assistance, which included diapers, blankets, bonnets, socks, soaps and towels, was in support of the Ministry of Education’s programme to afford school aged victims of teenage pregnancy an opportunity to continue their secondary education.
According to Acting Chief Schools’ Welfare Officer Carol Melville, three mothers aged 14 to 16 years will be re-integrated into the school system in the next school term. These students will be placed at the schools they last attended, if they so request, or at another school of their choice.
Others, Melville said, who are above 16, will be enrolled at the Adult Education Association, the Carnegie School of Home Economics, or the Sophia Training Centre.
She pointed out that the young mothers came to the attention of the Schools’ Welfare Department following her officers outreach visits to health clinics, schools and communities.
She reported that the girls will be interviewed to assess their education level as well as to get an understanding of their plans for the future.
Parents of the young mothers will also be interviewed, and educational sessions will be done with the teenaged mothers with the focus on empowering them.
These sessions will cover several areas including life skills, building self-esteem, literacy and numeracy, parenting and child care, skills training, stress and anger management and basic Information Technology.
Melville stressed that the objective of the programme is to identify the needs of the targeted individuals, collect, collate and disseminate information on their experiences, empower them to perform their roles as parents and provide services to enhance and support their well-being.
These efforts , she said, are aimed at helping the young mothers to adjust to their new roles as parents.
The Ministry of Education has recognized that the drastic changes in people’s lifestyles over the past three decades and the programme to re-integrate teenaged mothers in school is one of the measures it has taken to ensure a progressive society for the vulnerable.
The Ministry is also of the view that education is a human right and a child who has become pregnant at 14 should not lose that right.
Headteachers have been encouraged to develop a sense of appreciation for teenaged parents, as some are victims of broken homes and other varying unfortunate circumstances.
Five teenaged mothers were successfully re-integrated into the school system last year.
The Schools’ Welfare Department will soon carry out surveys to obtain samples of affected teenaged mothers and pregnant girls in Regions Three, Four, and Five, and in Georgetown.
The findings of a recent research done here on the subject has revealed that teen mothers have an interest in continuing their education, but need various forms of intervention and support to succeed in this area.
These include an education environment that respects and understands their situation. Education Minister Shaik Baksh has noted that the quest to raise a literate population and enable every citizen an opportunity to be marketable has been demonstrated by the government’s interventions to improve the quality of life of every citizen, inclusive of the disadvantaged population.