AS teenage pregnancy continues to be a recurring issue in society, Women Across Differences (WAD) has been making significant contributions to alleviate the problem and to empower young women.

The Guyana Chronicle spoke with the Coordinator of WAD, Colonel Samuels-Boston following a graduation ceremony last week, who shared the influences made over the past decade as it relates to teenage pregnancy.

In addition to the myriad of programmes they offer at the organization, Boston said that they saw the need for one that targets adolescent mothers specifically.
In 2008, a baseline and a qualitative study were conducted by WAD which informed and supported the need for the Comprehensive Empowerment Programme for Adolescent Mothers (CEPAM). The idea of conducting the study was brought to the organisation by Patrice La Fleur, who was at that time the Liaison Officer at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The initiative is a year-long programme where adolescent mothers (ages 12-19 ) are given psychosocial support while being taught entrepreneurship skills, academics, and family planning, among other subject areas.

In 2009, the first graduation exercise was held from the pilot project, and a total of 23 adolescent mothers out of 25 successfully completed the first programme.
The influence made served as a motivation to continue the said programme annually. It was sponsored by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for the first five years, after which Republic Bank took over the sponsorship.

“Our intention was to provide the girls with a second chance, given their socio-economic circumstances which hinge on sexual abuse, poverty, lack of parental support/guidance and a societal culture which discriminates against this group. We are also committed to achieving greater gender equality by empowering young mothers to make educated choices, moving from one level to the next, breaking the cycle of inter-generation poverty by building income-earning capacity. By extension, we ensured that our young mothers remained on family planning techniques; we’ve exposed them to opportunities which saw them becoming successful entrepreneurs and more importantly, we’ve given them a safe place to share their stories and advocating for their own rights,” Boston said.

She shared that the adolescent mothers who benefited from the programme came from a wide cross-section of our society through the collaboration with the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) where all adolescent mothers are referred since they are considered high-risk cases. The Child Care and Protection Agency also refers girls to the programme.

Boston also disclosed that ninety per cent of the girls that passed through the programme are from single-parent families, suffer from some form of poverty, and are often engaged in risky sexual behaviours. Many of them were sexually abused during childhood and were involved in abusive intimate relationships, and suffer from low self-esteem.
“The objective of the programme is to provide a safe and enabling friendly learning environment for pregnant adolescent girls and adolescent mothers to acquire adolescent sexual & reproductive health information and services so as to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies and to acquire life and other skills to create a better life for themselves and children,” she said.

Thus far, 570 young mothers have passed through the programme and the last batch graduated last week.

At the graduation ceremony, which was hosted in the Baridi Benab at State House, Ms. Iyanna Grenardo, one of the graduates, testified of the programme’s impact on her life. She praised WAD for providing an anchor from which she could access CEPAM and become a success. “Women Across Differences is my comfort zone. They taught me how to be strong and how to write things in the sand and let the wind of forgiveness blow it away; they taught me how to love everyone because everyone has been through something and they need help to recover; they taught me how to be a mother and they helped me to further my education,” she said.

The success of the programme is evident, as the girls from the 2012 batch created their own group called ‘The young mothers for change’. This great idea was initiated by one beneficiary who thought it was important for them to be their own advocates to make the change that they wanted to see. As such, once you complete the programme you can then become a member of the group.

The group goes out into communities and schools to share their stories with other young girls and encourage them down the right path.