Peace Mbeiza the founder of Sow In Her Initiative says she is passionate about girl child education and impacting change in rural communities of Uganda.
Mbeiza who started volunteering in her senior six vacation with Restless Development Uganda (RDU) was driven into helping vulnerable young girls in rural areas with essentials such as sanitary towels were some were getting sexually exploited in their exchange .
“I've been working in the area of period poverty because very many of our girls in Eastern Uganda don’t have access to sanitary pads and information. I've been training the girls on how to make reusable sanitary towels while providing them with information about menstrual health, addressing the myths and also mentoring girls in schools,” Mbeiza told Crystal Newman during an interview on The Groove Show.
She informed that in rural areas, girls can go upto 4 days out of school due to the lack of sanitary towels and others end up dropping out after a number of missing classes.
“Some of them have sex for pads. A number of them have been tempted and fallen victim. I remember talking to one of the girls and she told me that they use leaves, cotton and some of them use buveras, it's so sad,” said Mbeiza.
Luckily, Mbeiza said that she has come up with a team of young people passionate about helping young girls and have formed Sow In Her Initiative Uganda (SIHI) that seeks to invest in girl child education and also to fill the digital gap in rural communities, plus empowering young girls by providing access to information through digital means.
Mbeiza is also a volunteer with the Young African Leaders Initiative that empowers young people with leadership skills and challenges them to create change in their different communities.
She is also a climate change enthusiast, a title she obtained after a research project done with Restless Development Uganda. On the Youth Features program, she said that the team carried out research on the impacts of climate change on young people’s livelihoods in Jinja and Karamoja region.
The research project found out that girls and women were vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and how some people were uncertain of the future based on the impacts of the changing climate.
However, the project also discovered a need to provide information and skills on climate change adaptation and mitigation.
“There is a need to acknowledge that climate change is real, a need for climate change information in schools and in communities. In villages we can use locally available channels like community radios, engaging with community leaders and including young people in the fight, where their voices can be heard and implemented,” she said.
The Groove Cafe with Crystal Newman airs every Weekday from 4-5pm on RX Radio.
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