Life Skills Education empower girls combating Early Marriage

A champion peer-educator and meritorious student- Ruma Akther (16) is educating life skills to girls who are at risk of early marriage. Ruma lives in Polashpur slum under the city of Barisal in Southern Bangladesh with her day-laborer father, housemaid mother and three younger siblings. Including Ruma, World Vision (WV) trains adolescents aged 12 to 16 on ‘Life Skills’ and educates thousands of girls through their trained ‘peer-educators’. Ruma reaches out 270 girls and empowers them to change their life stories.

“In search of a better living, my parents migrated to Barisal city- an old port and trade center, and started working as a porter- carrying basket-full of fish to load off fishing boats to market places,” narrates Ruma. Ruhul Ameen (50), her father started living in slums in Barisal city with other dwellers that were migrant workers such as rickshaw pullers, transporters, hawkers, cleaners, domestic servants and menial laborers. Many people in the slums married more than two times, increased family members and became poorer. As they had no family planning and their family grew bigger, Ruhul went bad to afford food and educational expenses with his poor daily wages taka 150 ($2) only. Due to poverty, both their first two girls- Rupa (23) and Yeasmin (19) dropped out from school and Ruhul married them off. Both the girls became mothers at their age of 15. Ruma says, “Failing to pay dowry, my sister Rupa’s marriage ended up in divorce and she returned to her parents with her 4-year-old daughter.” Ruma was reared in slums, dropped out from school, so did her two sisters. Ruma learnt sewing from a neighbor and started contributing little in family income. World Vision’s Child Safety Net Project trained 140 adolescent girls at risk of early marriage in their slums, including Ruma. Thanks to WV’s Life Skills training as she internalized bad effects of being married in early age from her two sisters and said ‘no’ to her early marriage proposal. Ruma engaged WV’s field staff and successfully motivated her parents to stop her early marriage. “Ruma’s busy life started from tailoring at home and helping us financially while World Vision donated a sewing machine with tools and raw inputs including fabrics, threads, buttons, marking chalks and measuring scales, tapes,” says Parul Begum (45), Ruma’s mother. Being a paid peer-educator with WV, Ruma educates Life Skills to at-risk girls of her age group and helps them protecting themselves. Receiving counseling from WV’s front-line staff, Ruma used her remunerations and wages from tailoring work. She reenrolled in school, bought books, school supplies and paid schooling fees. Ruma also affords educational supports to her younger siblings and is able to keep them in schools. In addition, she spends her money to address miscellaneous needs for their extended family including medications for her parents.

Photo : Ruma (in middle) along with her peers are going to school 
to change their life and dreaming a better future. 

“Ruma advocates and combats early marriage and violence against girls in and around our slums. She continues teaching life-skills to adolescent girls that increased retention in schooling, reduced dropout rates and stopped early marriages within our slum,” says Onu, a ninth grade student who have benefitted from Ruma’s teaching.