Girls Mini Conference

So, Eswatini is known for its breathtaking natural landscape, beautiful scenery, green vegetation, vibrant culture and friendly people. Having said that, there are still some major setbacks for our girls situated in the rural areas which can make it difficult to enjoy the nature we have when hardships are so near to home. Still on the mission to bring truth to all teenage girls in the kingdom, the Brave Girl Initiative went on yet another adventure of changing lives. This time we travelled to a small community located on in the Lowveld, Sinceni.

This girl talk was help to raise awareness on the dangers of engaging in premature sexual activities, which tend to give birth to a lot of consequences, which have halted a lot of our girls’ futures in the kingdom. We kicked off with icebreakers aimed at making the girls feel more comfortable in sharing their thoughts without the fear of being reprimanded. After that, we selected 3 girls to be mommies for the day to a little baby egg. The girls had to do all activities with the baby egg in tow and jot down when the baby egg ate, drank, slept, played etc. The girls found this activity to be easy …at first. Our day went on with speakers talking about STI’s, consequences of sexual engagement at a young age, further risks of poverty etc. We really wanted to get the girls honest opinions on why they feel the need to have relationship, and at times with much older gentlemen. These were the answers we were given: For money, for a good time cause being home all day can be boring, to get chocolates, to get food, because their friends are doing it and they have nice cell phones. This was a sad thing to hear. Society has normalized being in a relationship for materialistic things.

One thing we strive to do as The Brave Girl Initivative is to equip young girls with good decision making skills, and after hearing from the girls it was quite clear that there is misinformation circulating on how an actual relationship is meant to be. We also tackled the topic of gender based violence with a very special guest, Tengudze. This beautiful brave girl, spoke about her own experiences of domestic and emotional abuse. She was so brave in sharing her journey of suffering at the hands of a man who claimed to love her. The room became so silent when she relieved that in the relationship, she too had stayed for the materialistic purposes and lost her identity and everything she was doing was now for this man who was taking everything from her.

She was so courageous and went on to advice young girls to focus on investing in their future, once you are able to know your worth then no person will define who you are. This was truly the highlight of the event, filled with true emotions based on true life events.