Marriage: For Adults Only - A WOW! e-Brief

 

WORLD NEIGHBORS AND PREVENTION OF CHILD MARRIAGE

Given World Neighbors work with rural communities to end poverty, child marriage is a challenge in a number of the communities with which we partner. Of the top 10 “Hot Spot Countries for Child Marriage” that the International Center for Research on Women recently identified, World Neighbors is present in four —Niger, Nepal, Uganda and Burkina Faso. In all of these countries, more than half of all girls are married before they reach 18 years of age. In addition, India and Nicaragua are among the top 20 countries for child marriage, with 50 percent and 43 percent, respectively, marrying before 18.

Strategies for discouraging and preventing child marriage include promoting the benefits of girls’ education, improving women’s ability to produce income and make decisions concerning that income and, in general, raising women’s status in the community.

And World Neighbors work in this area has had success. For example, in several communities where we work in northern India and southwestern Nepal, the average age of marriage for girls was 17.6 years old when work began. A significant number were just 12 years old. In the seven years since our South Asian team began working there, the average age of marriage has increased to almost 21.5 years, with just one girl as young as 14 years old.

Says Gopal Nakarmi, World Neighbors program coordinator for South Asia, "We collect information on girls' marriage age in our groups. We feel very happy that the marriage age for them is increasing." He credits greater opportunities for the girls and their parents, as well as greater understanding of the benefits of delaying marriage, as the primary factors driving this success. A vital component, he notes, is women's groups. "These groups provide a platform to women to discuss their common problems, and develop ways to overcome those challenges," he reflects.

Join WOW! Now

Since educating girls has been a significant factor in reducing the rates of child marriage for girls, ensuring access to primary and secondary school for girls is critical, as is working to change any social norms that discourage girls’ education. For example, in an isolated village in Bihar, India, World Neighbors and a partner organization support a non-formal school for Dalit girls who previously could not attend school. In addition to offering education in Hindi, English, math, health and hygiene, history, the philosophy of Gandhi and other topics to girls from extremely poor and marginalized families, teachers meet monthly with parents to discuss the progress their daughters are making in school, and to develop wider support for efforts to end gender discrimination and early marriage. Other examples of programs include literacy programs and managing finances. Research has also found that when there are income earning opportunities for young, unmarried women after they finish education, marriage tends to be delayed.

World Neighbors also works to provide greater opportunities for women to earn an income. Women’s savings and credit groups, where group members make very small monthly contributions to a savings pool, provide myriad benefits including awareness raising among the women, increasing self-confidence as they make decisions and contribute to their family’s and community’s well-being, small loans for starting businesses and weathering family crises and increasing women’s status within their community. Women like Debika Phuyal, now a small business owner in the Terai region of Nepal, are able to join a savings and credit group, overcome a financial crisis and start a household business that raises the entire family’s standard of living. When women are able to have an income and have some decision making power over its use, families are far more likely to support schooling for girls as well as boys, and improve the nutrition of the children.

World Neighbors also supports improved access to better health care and family planning. Both are critical to improve the lives of girls who are already married (as well as other women and men) and give them the chance to pass their dreams along to their children.

In addition to the larger work of improving opportunities and strengthening hope, World Neighbors staff and partners sometimes simply help people see other ways of doing things—through visits to other villages, field schools and so on. In Lombok, Indonesia, one of our local partners facilitated a group of teenaged girls, which met several times a month to discuss day-to-day issues like school, house chores, and marriage. In this area, kidnapping and forced marriage of girls is the norm. The young women were very interested, however, to learn that this did not occur everywhere else in the world. This glimpse into other possibilities offered enough hope to one thirteen-year-old participant that when she was kidnapped for marriage by a much older man and taken across the island away from her family, she fled back to her family asking for acceptance back based on this newfound knowledge. From a seed planted, a flower blooms.

Read more . . .

Photographs by Natalie Elwell/World Neighbors.

Donate Now!

 

Overview of Child Marriage

Learn More and Get Involved

A WOW! e-Brief

Work of Women program @ World Neighbors

June 2007

back