Not in my school: Vihiga teacher's vow to prevent teen pregnancies, keep girls in school
Euphresia Rina Ageyo, a secondary school teacher in Vihiga County spearheading a campaign to against teenage pregnancy, during the interview on November 10, 2023.
What you need to know:
- Euphresia Rina Ageyo got a job as a secondary school teacher in Vihiga and took it up with gusto.
- She looked forward to building her career in the teaching profession, which she had admired since her childhood.
- She had great admiration for the job because it offered her an opportunity to mould students into responsible members of society.
After finishing her undergraduate studies, Euphresia Rina Ageyo got a job as a secondary school teacher in Vihiga.
She took up the job with gusto and looked forward to building her career in the teaching profession, which she had admired since her childhood.
She had great admiration for the job because it offered her an opportunity to mould students into responsible members of society.
In an interview with Nation.Africa, Euphresia says her teaching job went on well for a few months before she started observing a disturbing trend.
“Every often, I would receive a girl in the school who was pregnant. I became alarmed and concerned as the cases became rampant. I told myself that something needed to be done to arrest the problem.”
The history teacher says she had to do something. She launched a campaign involving mentorship targeting adolescent girls. Through the initiative, those who are already pregnant or mothers are counselled and helped to continue with their education.
Initially, the campaign focussed on schools in the county. She has covered 40 per cent of them. She has since extended the drive to public forums and churches.
She also raises awareness through local radio stations. She now pushes for access to justice for all forms of gender-based violence (GBV) against girls. She connects survivors with legal aid and paralegal services.
She is happy that her campaign is bearing fruit, with the number of GBV survivors getting justice rising.
“I am elated to note that my efforts have brought in positive results. This year alone, we have seen the conviction of four perpetrators accused of impregnating minors in the area. This has given us more morale to fight for justice.”
Euphresia is also a member of the court users’ committee at the Vihiga Law Courts. She says the situation on the ground is dire, with two in 10 teenage girls being pregnant.
Enablers
She attributes the prevalence to incest, defilement, poor parenting, alcohol and substance abuse.
Her campaign has not been a bed of roses. She has faced myriad challenges, which include deep-rooted patriarchal beliefs, some of which are supported by women themselves.
Euphresia Rina Ageyo, a secondary school teacher in Vihiga County spearheading a campaign to against teenage pregnancy, during the interview on November 10, 2023.
She also lists harassment by state and non-state actors while following up on cases. A case in point, she says, is when she received threats from a member of the county assembly (MCA) who had been accused of impregnating a minor.
In such cases, she says steps back as a precautionary measure and front someone else to push on with the case.
Arbitrary arrests of human rights defenders as a way of intimidating and silencing them is another challenge.
Also hampering her work is the inadequacy of resources. She further cites lack of well-trained counsellors to offer psychosocial and counselling support to the teenage mothers and other GBV survivors.
Through the tips she has acquired, Euphresia offers basic counselling to survivors to help them cope with trauma. She hopes to train in counselling psychology to enable her to undertake proper counselling.
“Kangaroo courts are the worst nightmare that we are facing. They are aiding teenage pregnancy. Many perpetrators are let off the hook as a result, thus making many survivors fail to get justice.”
Vihiga is one of the three counties in western Kenya where GBV is rampant. The others are Bungoma and Kisumu.
Partnership project
The three are beneficiaries of a three-year project, which is a collaboration between UN Women and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights supported by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation.
UN Women Kenya County Representative Anna Mutavati says they have broadened the scope to include strengthening prevention and response efforts with emphasis on improving access to justice systems, and empowering women as leaders in peacebuilding.
“We have built the capacity of stakeholders, such as health, police, and judiciary professionals, to offer high-quality services that respond to the needs of GBV survivors,” she says.
“Additionally, we have supported survivors in accessing legal, health, counselling, and shelter services. We have improved coordination among stakeholders working in prevention and response.”
Ms Mutavati notes that the project encourages community dialogues on harmful practices and social norms that condone and encourage GBV. “We have also built the capacity of the justice system to deliver justice for survivors without delay.”
She observes that poverty and lack of viable livelihoods are still driving GBV, and that has been worsened by the current economic climate, with increased financial stress exposing women and girls to vulnerabilities.
Lack of an integrated GBV data system where all service providers can share and utilise data is also a serious problem that makes it difficult to track and follow up on cases.
Mr Giovanni Grandi, the head of the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation Regional Office in Nairobi, says without ambitious investments to scale up prevention, effective policies and provision of support services, countries will fail to end GBV by 2030.
“This year, we launched the third phase of the ‘Let It Not Happen Again’ project, which brings our total commitment towards this successful initiative to a staggering 2.7 million Euros (Sh446 million).
"Recently, we launched an initiative worth 4 million Euros (Sh650 million), specifically targeting women's empowerment, improving health and environmental sustainability in arid and semi-arid lands,” Mr Grandi tells Nation.Africa.
For Euphresia, she is happiest when survivors get justice and perpetrators are put in their place, she says.
