Point of Progress remains optimistic in fighting child marriages through sporting activities
In a quest to eradicate child marriages and promote gender equality among the communities, a non-profit non-governmental organization, Point of Progress is conducting community awareness campaigns through a project dubbed at “Girls Get Equal”.
Through the project, one of the awareness campaign tool is sports bonanza which according to project officer at Point of Progress, Henderson Phiri it is among one of tools which they believe it will help to achieve the aim of the project as sports has universal language and transcends cultural and social barriers, as it also provides excellent platform for promoting social change.
“We suggest that we should use sports so that we have the diverse people regarding to gender as well as ages, so this was a strategy to make sure that we have mobilized a lot of people so that they can get our messages and they should be aware of issues to do with gender equality as well as issues to do with harmful practices of child marriages.
“We are planning to have more of these engagements so that the communities should be fully aware when it comes to issues to do with child marriages as well as alleviating harmful cultural practices that brings fertile area for child marriages,” Phiri said.
Girls Get Equal (GGE), is a project aiming at reducing child marriages and promoting a girl child to attain education to tertiary level as well as encouraging chiefs and norm setters to reduce harmful social practices which trigger child marriages.
One of the facilitators of this project in Traditional Authority Chimutu who is also a chairperson of Community Victim Support Unity (CVSU), Lyfod Gwazani it is very crucial to tackle issues of gender equality and eradication of child marriages through sports initiatives as it always carry the attention of many people in so doing the message will reach to masses in a short period.
He therefore commended Point of Progress for the project as it has civic educate people in the area as of now alot of girls are going back to school with the efforts through the project. But he was quick to react on the need for improvement through the project, as other student are lacking school fees and he made a plea if the project can come up with bursary initiative for needy students to benefit.
The project so far is being implemented in three districts of Mulanje, Phalombe and Lilongwe as they plan to extend to other districts.
The sports bonanza was organized with funds amounting to MK736,010 which saw the winning team carrying home MK120,000 and the runners up pocketing MK80,000.
Mchemani football club carry the day after emerging winners over Mseche football by one goal to zero.
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