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CHAPTER TWO ONE
• training 392 local Cama members as pupil teachers to
address the chronic shortage of female teachers in rural
communities.
These integrated measures have a significant impact on
girls’ enrollment, gender equity in schools, retention and
performance for poor rural girls, and on key indicators
such as adolescent pregnancy rates. In Zambia, pregnancy
rates fell 9% between 2006 and 2008 in well established
Camfed schools (compared to a 31% increase in a control
sample). The evidence is that all such benefits continue
to improve the longer Camfed works in a district.
Mainstreaming child protection
The assurance of children’s well-being and safety in
school is a universal pre-condition for their learning and
development. Camfed works in close partnership with
community, state and civil institutions to ensure that the
principles of children’s rights and entitlement, to which
all bodies readily subscribe in principle, are enforced in
practice.
Camfed’s integrated support measures to protect
vulnerable children include:
• Comprehensive support at secondary level for the full
duration of the four- or five-year course of secondaryschool
study to provide security to girls who are otherwise
vulnerable to early marriage, high-risk employment, or
transactional sex in exchange for educational entitlement;
this is a model for the sector.
• Support organized around groups of girls, as Camfed has
found that a critical mass of 75% girls-to-boys is optimum
for girls’ performance in school.
• Female mentors at each partner school who are the first
port-of-call for any child experiencing problems; mentors
are vital members of the Camfed monitoring network.
• Child protection training within schools for teachers (and
in teacher-training programs) to instill a more child- and
girl-welcoming culture within schools.
The extent to which Camfed integrates child protection
into every level of its operation, from national and
international policy engagement to the detail of
its governance structures, is unprecedented within
international development, and represents a significant
shift towards systemic change in the status of girls
and young women in rural Africa. The benefits of
such comprehensive attention is evident in improved
enrollment and retention rates, pass rates, progress
towards gender equity in schools, and lower adolescent
pregnancy rates in Camfed partner schools.
These positive results are possible because Camfed
perceives all social and financial pressures on a girl’s
welfare as impediments to her educational future. It thus
takes care to design material support in conjunction
with psychosocial support, addressing girls’ unique social
needs and cultural vulnerabilities within a traditionally
patriarchal environment.
• Advocacy for greater numbers of female teachers, and
an innovative teacher-training scheme that offers local
Cama members the opportunity to qualify as teachers,
and incentives to teach within their rural communities.
Raising the standard of child protection
Camfed’s studies reveal that there are numerous
attitudinal challenges surrounding child protection
issues — from sexual abuse and harassment to bullying
and corporal punishment (which has been outlawed
in schools, but is still practiced). At every level of
society, Camfed is working to extend advocacy on child
protection.
In rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, criminal
investigations are seldom instigated in cases of
alleged child abuse. More often, adults negotiate what
they consider to be a resolution in the payment of
‘compensation’ by the alleged abuser. Poor parents
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