Our thanks to Fr Bernard Maganga

Fr Bernard is working with the wider community to ensure that fewer and fewer children drop out of primary school. At the initial exploratory stage a number of the participants engaged in the project suggested a number of factors causing young people to leave school prematurely. These include poverty, early marriage, early pregnancy lack of interest of pupils to repeat after failing, lack of interest of both parents and learners towards education, lack of role models.

Working with education officials, teachers parents and village chiefs, Fr Bernard is identifying ways of moving forward. High on the agenda is a series of careers education events helping young people and their parents recognise the benefit of education and to identify educational goals for them to work towards

Each group Group Village Headman together with the Chiefs and parents are also working to come up with by-laws that will apply to families and children that drop-out of school. These will be made in consultation with the villagers and made known to all the people.

We look forward to hearing about the next phase.