Rescue-a-girl-child to host virtual women symposium
Rescue-a-girl-child is scheduled to host a virtual women’s symposium under the theme ‘You Are Worth It’ on October 2, 2021. The non-governmental organisation, which is the brainchild of 30-year-old Tshegofatso Moroka, began last year and aims to address social needs of young girls.
Narrating how Rescue-a-girl-child started, Moroka explained that sometime ago she happened to have been in a church service at a village in Kgatleng District.
As she sat in the service and surveyed the demographics of the church, she could not help it but realise that quite a few of the young congregants, especially the girls, appeared to have some obvious social needs.
So, it was when she made that mental observation in the church setting, that she concluded that since the church is a subset of the community, it is highly likely that other girls in the village were facing similar economic hardships.
That is when the idea of donating sanitary pads came to Moroka’s mind. She had been donating sanitary pads to the underprivileged girls until the coronavirus put break on the campaign.
“The global advent of the COVID-19 pandemic left no aspect of our lives spared. Like almost everything else and everyone else, the Rescue-a-girl-child initiative did not escape the brunt of this scourge,” Moroka explained.
“Having begun on a very promising and positive note, mobilising sponsors and donors for sanitary pads to economically disadvantaged girls, the initiative suffered a major blow when the pandemic hit.”
She said with a moratorium on movement and public gatherings, it all but became impossible to source funding and donations.
Moroka explained that potential donors and sponsors became skeptical which is understandable because of the viability and effectiveness of the initiative under the prevailing COVID-19 climate. However, she said that did not dampen their spirits.
Moroka also emphasised the fact remained that disadvantaged girls who could not access sanitary pads found themselves in an even worse situation than before the pandemic.
She added the girls already had their backs against the wall before the pandemic, but with the economy both at national and household level taking a huge knock, it could only spell an even bleaker challenge for them.
Faced with that reality and the continued spread and persistence of the pandemic, Rescue-a-girl-child had to innovate.
She said they could not just abandon those who needed their assistance the most simply because the landscape had changed.
They had to find other ways of keeping the initiative going while also trying to cultivate confidence in any potential sponsor and donor that whatever assistance they would render would not be misused but duly accounted for.
“It is on this backdrop that we decided to host a virtual women’s symposium under the theme, ‘You Are Worth It’. Billed for October 2, 2021, the conference seeks to speak to the various challenges confronting the girl child or female person as well as giving any current and potential donor/sponsor a more comprehensive understanding of where the initiative is and where it is going.
We are looking to have a few speakers addressing certain key areas of interest and concern to the girl child,” she said.
Panellists billed for the conference include Lilian Moremi, a learning development practitioner and career coach, Dr Orapeleng Phuswane-Katse, a public health physician, Mercy Ramojela, a motivational blogger and entrepreneur, Letsha Kgotla, a psychotherapist and Pule March founder Makoti and Makoti To Be.
Moroka asserted that the hope is that, from this conference, all stakeholders will walk away with a fuller understanding of what needs to be done as well as a detailed roadmap of future aspirations and engagements of the Rescue-a-girl-child initiative.