Primary and secondary school girls of Karonga visit parliament

It is a story of a group of both primary and secondary school girls and girls dominantly from hard to reach areas of Karonga, most of them on their maiden trip out of the lakeshore district for a visit to parliament in Malawi ’s capital Lilongwe. The trip achieves to motivate both particularly girls who commit to working hard in school to take up challenging decision making positions in society. Through this story, it is interesting to appreciate what a mere visit to parliament and an interaction with a Speaker of Parliament along with other female ministers can do to learners such as these particularly girls who enrol for primary education. What is worrying is that over 80 percent of such girls fail to complete their primary circle of primary education by dropping out of school through a number of factors including harmful cultural practices like kupimbira where such are married off. Among them is this girl Ellen (not her real name) who was childhood was curtailed at the age of 8 when she was married off to a 52 year old man. You teach a girl you teach a village they say. It is therefore imperative that all best practices that can help bring back and return learners particularly girls be encouraged in the post millennium development goals agenda in order to add effective meaning to the newly touted Sustainable Development Goals SDGs.