Uganda has the sixteenth highest prevalence of child marriage in the world (UNICEF) especially among the less educated and low income households are at risk of harmful practices, including child marriage and female genital mutilation. Too many girls still face grave risks of early pregnancy, physical and psychological abuse. Their rights, to education, to be protected and to be empowered to influence decisions that affect their lives are denied. Child brides are often married into a relationship with an older man, where they lack the status and knowledge to negotiate safe sex and contraceptive practices. Child marriage places girls at risk of violence from in-laws, of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, as well as early pregnancy. Complications from pregnancy and childbearing are the leading causes of death among girls 15-19 years.
Joy for Children-Uganda with support from Girls First Fund (GFF) is implementing a one year project “Enhancing coordination and learning to end child marriage in Uganda. We are coordinating all activities of the 34 Girls First Fund grantees in Uganda working at community, regional and national levels. From experience we believe regular and effective coordination that involves capacity enhancement enable actors or partners to further learn with one another and enhance their advocacy efforts. In this regard JFCU shall Increase the network of learning beyond GFF grantees to the broader eco-system working to end child marriage. Connect grantees to other stakeholders like the Girls Not Brides Uganda members among other actors working in ending child marriage.
Project Expected Out Comes
- Increased collaboration and coordination among child marriage actors
- Promote a learning community among child marriage actors
- Increased evidence based Advocacy to End child marriage
Proposed Activities
- Conduct research to provide local data and knowledge – convene GFF grantees and other actors to generate local knowledge and other gender transformative approaches that can be accepted or adopted by other actors to end child marriage
- Mapping out child marriage actors
- Profiling child marriage actors- end child marriage actor’s database
- Monitoring visits – generate relevant data and evidence for programming and progress to end child marriage
- Documentation promising stories and Weekly news letters
- National coordination events with the multi sector task force on ECM – discuss the implementation of National Strategy to end child marriage and teenage pregnancies, disseminate findings and generate discussions towards the renewal of the strategy,
- Capacity building workshop for all actors on advocacy, monitoring and coordination aspects.
- organize a National Girl summit – National level knowledge sharing coordination events
- Call visits / convene amongst GFF grantees, GNBU members and other end child marriage actors for exchange learning.
- Coordination meeting with MGLSD and Child Marriage actors to review government efforts on ending child marriage and implementation of child protection related strategies and policies
