The Adolescent Girls Empowerment Program (AGEP) is a pilot program founded by Child Protection Society (CPS) in 2014. It is an initiative specifically targeting the empowerment of adolescent girls between 10 and 19 years of age. In practice, it has attracted beneficiaries who are ages of 8 – 24 years. Each week the beneficiaries registered meet with trained female Community Based Facilitators to discuss topics that include Sexual Reproductive Health, Leadership, HIV/AIDS, GBV, Human and Child rights, financial literacy, Communication, Job preparedness, child marriages, and others as per need. As an extension of the program, we have engaged females in society from different business sectors to mentor the girls and provide guidance and emotional support while raising aspiration levels amongst the beneficiaries.
Analysis has shown that prevalent are cases of child prostitution, juvenile delinquency, unemployment, school drop-outs, teen pregnancies that often result in illegal abortion, maternal morbidity, high levels of newly identified HIV/AIDS infections, child headed households, low aspiration levels, substance abuse, forced or early marriages, teen sexuality and unreported gender based violence which often is in the form of sexual abuse. However, all these quandaries have inevitable effects on the psychological well-being of the adolescents involved. Apart from the physical and pronounced problems, these girls are subjected to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, aggression and a general feeling of helplessness. These girls lack financial independence, and as a result,t they resort to early marriages and transactional relationships. There is a need to provide them with opportunities that generate income as a way of delaying their marriage debut.