Tackling Child Marriage

Learner Guides are role models and mentors, whose own experience means that they understand the challenges many students face — including grief through the loss of close family members, and the pressure to marry young.

Learner Guides return to their local schools and deliver a bespoke life skills and wellbeing program, My Better World, which aims to improve educational outcomes for children, particularly the most vulnerable. Beyond the classroom, they create an important home-school link, following up with children who drop out of school and working with communities to keep vulnerable girls safe from child marriage.

Galvanizing a community of support around vulnerable girls

Learner Guides work with teachers, traditional leaders, social workers and the police to protect child rights and get to the bottom of cases of abuse, including child marriage. Learner Guides are unrivalled ambassadors for the life changing power of education, and are gaining the support from powerful and influential traditional leaders.

Data deep-dive: Child marriage in the countries where we work

CAMFED mostly works in rural communities, where the prevalence of child marriage is significantly greater than in cities, and therefore higher than the national averages indicated below. All of the countries where CAMFED works have committed to eliminating child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals (Girls Not Brides 2020), yet big challenges remain. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased girls’ risk of child marriage due to school closures, poverty, and economic hardship, with some families seeing marriage as their only option to improve the prospects of their daughters.  The UNFPA estimates there could be an additional 13 million child marriages taking place between 2020 and 2030 across the globe that otherwise would not have occurred .

CAMFED is tackling the issue at a grassroots level, working with local stakeholders to educate communities about the risks that come with early marriage, and giving girls the emotional and financial support they need to stay in education. At the forefront of our activism are our young women leaders in the CAMFED Association, most of whom were once themselves at risk of early marriage, and have seen its devastating impact on girls in their communities. 

CAMFED Malawi has provided input into the development of the National Strategy on Ending Child Marriages, and worked closely with the Ministry of Gender, Children, Disability and Social Welfare to convene a national meeting to develop a plan of implementation. We also supported the formation of a national by-laws framework to prevent child marriage, and were invited by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to join a task force on the National Girls’ Education Strategy.

Find out more about our work in Malawi

CAMFED is a member of the Zambian Ministry of General Education’s Technical Working Group on strategies to improve child protection and safeguarding. In 2019,  CAMFED launched its Learner Guide program in Zambia. Through the program, young women school graduates are trained to return to their local schools, deliver sessions on life skills, wellbeing and sexual and reproductive health, and mentor and support students in their studies, ensuring girls stay in school and out of child marriage.

The program has the full support of the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of General Education in Zambia, which is looking at ways to scale it beyond CAMFED partner schools.

Find out more about our work in Zambia

CAMFED Tanzania contributed to the formulation of the National Plan of Action to end Violence against Women and Children at the invitation of the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children (MoHCDGEC).

In 2018, the Permanent Secretary of MoHCDGEC chose to present CAMFED’s Learner Guide program as best practice in tackling child violence at the End Violence Solutions Summit held in Sweden. In November 2019, as part of the Tanzania Real-time Scaling lab, the program was introduced to 31 members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Social Welfare and Community Development, who are looking to scale workable solutions for citizens in their constituencies.

Find out more about our work in Tanzania

CAMFED Zimbabwe’s position as Chair of the Gender and Disability Committee under the National Education Coalition enables us to advocate for policies to promote equitable, quality education and against child marriage.

Find out more about our work in Zimbabwe

CAMFED Ghana collaborates with the government to ensure that young women not only stay in school and out of child marriage, but see a pathway to independence and business leadership. 

We signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ghana Enterprises Agency to support training for young women in establishing businesses. In collaboration with the Government’s Guidance and Counselling Unit, CAMFED Ghana developed the Ministry of Education’s five-year Guidance and Counselling Strategic Plan, Teacher Mentor Training Manual and Civic Education Handbook.

Find out more about our work in Ghana