• S.A.G Fundraiser campaign.
A fundraiser would help protect our girls from sexual abuse, early marriage, young girl labor, and other kind of abuses. We could also create a program that could give them the opportunity to travel abroad for a period of time. Traveling abroad would empower the girls by exposing them to cultural diversities, and equip them to help other girls when they return back to their home town.
I- What created this situation
Girls from John Hicks High School often have to be placed in hosting families in the near-by small town of Lakota, when their parents live in a village that is located too far away from the school.
These girls will find themselves living in hosting families with strangers. The parents cannot afford to pay any compensation to these hosting families. These hosting families must feed these girls, put clothes on their backs and care for their health. This is a source of all kinds of abuses from these hosting families. The parents in turn are helpless watching these abuses because they gave their children voluntarily to these families without being able to pay any compensation. What it comes down to, is either closing their eyes to these abuses, or having the girls stay in the village without receiving any education, and therefore without any future. To give you an idea, the first year we opened our school, we had six pregnancies with only 70 students and only 20 girls. This is a too high a number of pregnancies. On top of sexual abuses, the girls are used as maids by the hosting families and to the children of these hosting families.
Girls living in villages that are too far away from the close-by small towns cannot pursue an education further than the primary school level(6th grade). These parents do not want their girls to be abused and would rather have them work in plantations in the village in order to help the family survive. The only option left to these girls is to get married at an early age.
II- What is the solution?
The solution is to provide them with a school bus. This would provide them with safe passage to and from school and would prevent the abuse caused by host families. It would give them a shot at completing their education and making an impact on the economy and providing prosperity for themselves and their families.