How Impact Girls started...
In late 2018, we received funding from the Sahm Family Foundation to significantly strengthen the ways that Impact Network served girls in our community. It was a multi-year grant with numerous components introducing school supports such as counseling, child protection workshops, and reproductive health workshops as well as the construction of additional latrines for girls and learning spaces for early learners. The core of these programs went on to form the foundation of our work with Impact Girls today, and we are immensely grateful for the support from Sahm Family Foundation.
As with every project, we measured quantitative outcomes around enrollment, attendance, and academic outcomes. But we also conducted a qualitative survey with a small subset of our grade 5-7 students to understand their perceptions of safety, wellbeing, and barriers to academic success. The responses to this initial survey informed our program immensely. For example, we learned that most students didn’t know what to do in the event that a friend confided in them about abuse s/he had suffered – in response, we started life skills workshops focused on role playing scenarios exactly like this one. We learned that most students were not aware of all of the human rights that they were entitled to, like the right to an education – in response, we created homeroom classes that cover some of the rights and responsibilities of children. And critically, we learned that only a quarter of our female students were using pads during their menstrual cycle, resorting to cloth rags and even paper – in response, we created empowering pad-making workshops and menstrual health hygiene classes.
We’ve written about these programs numerous times over the years – you can read more here, here, here, here, here, and most recently, here. It’s hard to remember a time where School Support Officers were not in our schools supporting our students with wraparound wellbeing programs. Our child protection work has grown so much, encompassing two School Support Managers who manage at-risk students and support our toughest child protection cases. And three years later, we conducted the same qualitative wellbeing survey to better understand how our upper primary students felt at school. The results were stunning to me – they certainly highlight areas that we can improve, but overall, they also show a story about how our programs have helped shape our students. Now, 94% of our students would tell a teacher or trusted adult if a friend confided in them about abuse. A strong majority of students are aware of their human rights as children. And over 60% of female students are using sanitary pads and know how to make their own.
The survey is just a small peek into our wraparound programs that support student learning. But it made clear just how critical and life-changing these programs can be for our students. We must and will continue to make sure they stay funded for our future generations of students. In particular for this work, I’d like to thank each of our staff members that helped to create and support these programs, including – all of our School Support Officers (especially those for upper primary grades), Caroline and Edward (our School Support Managers), Elida and Busiwa (our Project Team), Lweendo (our Logistics and Community Relations Lead), Promise and Samuel (members of our Senior Management team) and Karly and Annabelle (our Director of Operations and Director of Academics). Additionally, former Impact Network staff members helped to lay the groundwork for this work – Felicia, Fanny, Chitalu, and Sabrina. To each of them we owe our gratitude!
-Reshma