GENET moves to empower Mulanje girls with entrepreneurship skills
Girls Empowerment Network (GENET) has embarked on empowering girls in Mulanje district with entrepreneurship skills for them to be able to do various businesses and remain financially independent.
GENET is carrying out the initiative through a three-year project dubbed Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYW) Project, which the organization is implementing in the district with funding from Global Fund through World Vision International.
In an interview, Coordinator for the Project, Ennipher Masaka, said through the AGYW Project GENET provides basic theoretical knowledge concerning entrepreneurship among the girls.
“We train the girls’ theoretical component of entrepreneurship, as part of the training we encourage them do savings on their own so that if they can save more they should start businesses that would help them remain economically independent,” Masaka said.
She added that their move is to make sure that girls’ and young women in Mulanje are able to do businesses that would help them become economically empowered.
The Project Coordinator further said that her organization believe that if girls and young women are financially independent cases of HIV/AIDS, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases, would be reduced in their midst.
“Sometimes you find girls engaging in sexual activities in order to get some money to support themselves; as a result, they fall in a trap of HIV/AIDS and related diseases.
“Therefore, with the AGYW entrepreneurship component, we believe that will help girls and young women do business on their own, and it will also prevent the girls from engaging themselves in sexual relationship with men in search of financial support,” she said.
According to her, so far some girls in Mulanje district are doing farming and tailoring businesses among other entrepreneurial ventures.
Recently some beneficiaries of the organization who are doing tailoring attended AGYW National Youth Symposium at Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe where the Minister of Youth and Sports, Richard Chimwendo Banda, appreciated their work.
In her comment one of the GENET beneficiaries, Georgina Banda who is doing tailoring business hailed GENET for its project saying that her life has been transformed.
“With my tailoring business I am able to make over K100 thousand per month,” explained Banda, and she added: “I am able to take care of myself and some of it I am saving for my studies which I would like to pursue in future,” Banda said.
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