ENGINE for Nigerian girls

The event was the launch of the Advisory Group of a project on Empowering Nigerian Girls in New Enterprises (ENGINE). The launch was combined with an inaugural strategy meeting. It was organised by Mercy Corps, an international humanitarian organization and it was attended by various development partners, nongovernmental organisations, gender activists and mentors of girl […]

The event was the launch of the Advisory Group of a project on Empowering Nigerian Girls in New Enterprises (ENGINE). The launch was combined with an inaugural strategy meeting. It was organised by Mercy Corps, an international humanitarian organization and it was attended by various development partners, nongovernmental organisations, gender activists and mentors of girl children. Participants were welcomed by Emily Oldmeadow while Rabi Sani made a presentation on the objectives of the meeting. They include making connections and bringing the appointed Advisory Group members on board the ENGINE train, putting the advisory board on the driving wheel of ENGINE project and to design a road map for its sustainability impact assessment. ENGINE is a global initiative involving twenty countries. Mark Lowcock, Permanent Secretary, Department for International Development DfID said “If you change the prospects of an adolescent girl on a big enough scale, you will transform societies”…
There were good will messages from development partners and the network of partner NGOs. In the presentation by Mercy Corps staff, Oladipupo B. Ipadeola highlighted some national statistics on education. ‘Out of 42.1 million Nigerian children eligible for primary education, only 22.3 million (about 53%) are in school; while out of 33.9 million eligible for secondary education, only 6.4 million (about 19%) are in school.
Report of a survey conducted in nine northern states shows that over 80% of women are unable to read (compared with 54% for men). Of the girls currently not enrolled in school, 75% reported being enrolled at some point in the past.
For those in school, girl to boy enrolment ratio is 1:3, while about 45% of girls in Kaduna state are out of school. Furthermore, in northern Nigeria, only 4% of females who complete secondary school manage to receive tertiary education.
The presentation also touched on child labour which ‘interferes with children‘s schooling. Nearly one-third of core-poor children combine work and school. According to the UN Children‘s Fund (UNICEF Nigeria, 2006), 15 million children under the age of 14 are working across the country to support their families.  Nigerian girls are faced with lack of access to education, empowerment, and health services. Data shows that girls are more subjected to child abuse, labour and trafficking in Nigeria. In terms of education and empowerment, Girls in Northern Nigeria are more affected than their counterpart in other Geopolitical zones. Girls in Nigeria begin paid labour a full year before their brothers: the average age at which girls began working for pay, as reported in the Nigerian Child Labour Survey (NCLS), was just 10.5 years.
Women and girls face multiple obstacles to access finance, including lack of collateral and limited financial literacy. As a result they hold fewer than 22% bank loans and 85% of them do not have a bank account. In public sphere, gender stereotypes, reinforced by low education attainment levels and cultural concepts of shame, seclusion and respectability, restrict and control women’s autonomy and life chances.’’
ENGINE is designed as a pro poor project and the presentation highlighted the fact poverty impacts on maternal health underscoring the fact that ‘poor girls are much more likely to begin their families as adolescents; nearly 46% of young women in the poorest quintile become pregnant before the age of 20. About 47% of Nigerian women are mothers before they reach age 20. A third of 16-19 years old in Northern Nigeria have given birth to a child without the help of a health professional, traditional birth attendant or even a friend or relative.
Every single day, Nigeria loses about 2,300 under-five year olds and 145 women of childbearing age. A woman’s chance of dying from pregnancy and childbirth in Nigeria is 1 in 13. This makes the country the second largest contributor to the under–five and maternal mortality. A study conducted by Campaign Against Unwanted Pregnancy (CAUP) in 2006 revealed that young people contribute more than 60% of unsafe abortions taking place annually in Nigeria and adolescents make up four out of every five hospital patients with abortion related complications.’
ENGINE believes that if we invest our time, energy and capital in an adolescent girl, we will be transforming societies and that supporting girls is smart economics.  To achieve this, ENGINE plans to improve the lives of 18,000 marginalised girls in Abuja FCT, Kaduna, Kano and Lagos States. ENGINE’s theory of Change states that when marginalized Nigerian girls complete education and training cycles and are supported by gate keepers they will be more skilled employees and have increased earning power and increased decision making within the household.
The goal of ENGINE is to improve life chances for marginalized girls. It will deliver the following for adolescent girls –obtain skills training that will help lead to increased wages and direct assets.
At Household level, ENGINE aims to develop more productive households and communities with improved social and economic status of girls and women, as well as reduced income poverty within the targeted communities through increased savings for herself and her household.
At schools level ENGINE will assess learning outcomes and supplement girls’ academic curriculum while facilitating engagement as schools can adopt the learning Space Curriculum. At the business level, by learning and acquiring demand driven skills, girls can become more skilled employees and micro- retailers.  At the community level, ENGINE believes that their girls will keep their own children longer in school and break the intergenerational cycle’s low educational achievement and poverty.
After the plenary session, participants were divided into their state based groups to enable Advisory Group members to make commitments, develop the work plan and action plan for each state where ENGINE will be implemented. The Kaduna participants sat with Chijioke Ukaobasi, a staff of Mercy Corps who monitored our group work as we developed our work plan.  Each member made individual commitments.
A week after we returned to Kaduna, members of the State Advisory Group SAG convened a meeting of various stakeholders working in gender, economic empowerment, education, the girl child etc and introduced the ENGINE project to them. The meeting held at ABANTU for Development a gender based NGO and members reviewed the various ENGINE related initiatives that were ongoing in the state.
They discussed how networking among them could enhance and support the work of Community Action for Popular Participation CAPP which is the NGO charged with ENGINE in Kaduna state. They also made commitments to promote E.N.G.I.N.E.