Africa-Press – Botswana. It’s past time we ended the stigma and tax on periods for girls around our communities hence our strategic partnership with ARISA,” Botswana Organisation for Sisters Empowering Junior Associates (BOSEJA) Executive Director Ms Tumelo Tsele has said.
BOSEJA, is a nonprofit organisation that runs an after-school programme for young girls, working in collaboration with local schools, parents and volunteers/ community members.
In an interview with BOPA Monday, Ms Tsele said Advancing Rights in Southern Africa (ARISA) was a human rights programme operating across southern Africa region implemented by Freedom House in collaboration with Internews.
Ms Tsele said the partnership with ARISA committed to improving recognition, awareness, and enforcement of human rights within Maboane, Artesia and Takatokwane communities, with a cross-cutting emphasis on protecting vulnerable and marginalised groups, especially the girl-child.
Strategic workshops with parents, teachers, and pupils with a view to sensitise them on ways of reducing stigma and discrimination on a girl-child, within identified communities will be held April-June 2023, she said.
“Our hope is to deduce evidence-based reports and disseminate information from all campaigns through media and influence policy makers to act on promoting and protecting human rights,” she said.
Ms Tsele further indicated that they committed to running a successful advocacy through social media platforms, including WhatsApp groups with parents, teachers and community leaders.
She said this would deliver direct engagement with key stakeholders and ensure sustainable impact beyond project delivery, citing that such platforms influenced policy makers to act on human rights violations.
She said the workshops would provide counselling and mentorship to learners with a view to sensitise them on the importance of attaining goods grades at school.
The three months of active engagement with the community will promote dialogue on constraints faced by a girl-child with communities, she said.
In addition, she said they hoped to encourage mindset change among teachers, parents, and the girls to further preserve human rights.Ms Tsele said BOSEJA understood the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and to make 2030 Agenda a reality for Botswana, it took outreach activities such as For Them Now, Hope is Here campaigns to change people’s mindset for a better tomorrow.
She said their campaigns cut across all 17 sustainable development goals, something she dubbed progressive in the quest to maintain a just society, and grooming future leaders out of a girl-child.
The BOSEJA executive director, further indicated that in pursuit to building neat communities, with well-groomed children they embarked on a series of assignments ranging from Barack Obama 2018 Africa Project; The Patriot Woman; The School Club and Beyond the Classroom Initiative in partnership with Ministry of Education and others.
“We speak up boldly about our vision to help end period poverty, as well as the shame and stigma associated with it, especially among the girl-child,” she concluded.
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