Low self-esteem leading to girls dropouts in Malawi schools
Low self-esteem is said to be among the major challenges causing girls to venture into immoral behaviours, resulting in many dropouts in Salima and Chikwawa.
This was learnt on Friday when Chikwawa Community Development Committee (CDC) of Campaign for Female Education (Camfed) visited Salima CDC to share experiences on some of the major challenges the two districts are facing.
Among other achievements, Salima CDC has reduced the school dropout rate for girls from a 58 percent last year to 12 percent this year.
Camfed operations coordinator for Salima, Ursula Ngwira, said the major challenge leading to increased number of girls dropout was lack of self esteem.
“We had a big problem because many of our girls were dropping out of school and we found out that many of them had low self-esteem and they had no vision about their future, as such, they were opting for immoral behaviours as a fast way of getting cash,” she said.
The acting district education manager for Chikwawa, Thomas Mbwembwe, said they will emulate the experiences in Salima to uplift girl child education.
He said it is important to focus on building the girls’ self esteem as a way of tackling the major challenges of the two districts.
Camfed started in Salima in 2012 and it has 529 beneficiaries while in Chikwawa, the project started being implemented in 2009 and has 1045 students.
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