SOS Children’s Villages Eswatini - Sebenele’s story
Who: SOS Children’s Villages
What: SOS Children’s Villages in Eswatini
Sebenele Mkhwanazi
Sebenele Mkhwanazi is 21 years old and lives in a small community known as Nyamane. She lives with her unemployed mother, her brother and her five-year-old son. She joined the programme in 2020, during the Covid-19 era. During this time, she was doing her secondary education at the nearest high school (Nyamane High school). She was struggling to pay for her educational fees, she did not have a proper school uniform, such that the school head teacher would sometimes send her back home to go and collect school fees money. When she joined the programme, she had thoughts of dropping out of school to search for a job so that she could provide for her family including her son, as the father’s son was not providing any kind of support towards their child. In those trying times, she became a beneficiary under the Grieg Gender Programme as a teenage mother.
The programme provided her with school subsidy (school fees and school uniform). It was also discovered that there were online classes that were ongoing at school since students could not attend physical classes due to the Covid-19 Lockdown. She was provided with a smartphone so that she could have access to online schoolwork. Her educational performance changed, she passed her exams with flying colours. Her self-confidence also improved. She later started to participate during the peer to peer gender and empowerment sessions that were conducted in her community by the peer educators. She gained a voice, as she was one of the people to encourage other young people in her position never to give up, and that it is possible for them to achieve their dreams regardless of what they have experienced in life. Sebenele will exit the programme in 2024, after completing her secondary school.
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