2019-Josephine

Josephine

Nominated by Plan International

All 2019 Children’s Peace Prize Nominees

Josephine lost her mother in 2006 and was raised by her father until 2008, when he got married. Due to the marriage’s instability, money became a problem and Josephine was forced to drop out of school. Because of this and because of witnessing violation of rights of girls in her community, she was motivated to become an advocate for girls’ rights. As a result, she organized fundraising events to support vulnerable children and reduce school dropout rates. She found that the reason for poor school attendance was because of “market day” being from Saturday to Wednesday, when children were supposed to be at school. Instead, they skipped classes to go shopping. To stop this, Josephine sat down with community leaders to negotiate moving “market day” to the weekend. She also spoke to various child protection committees about the dropout rates of children forced into marriage and encouraged them to go back to school. As a result, 25 girls resumed their education. Josephine wants to reach out to even more girls and inform them about their rights.