We’ve made great progress on the girls’ dormitory.
The Underlying Story:
A new girls’ dormitory is under construction in Bulo. Especially in Uganda, young girls often do not have safe or positive living conditions available to them. Teenage pregnancies presuppose school drop-outs. So, providing a safe haven, encouraging wholesome behavior, instilling moral values and continued education is the goal. It creates an environment for remarkable cultural improvement.
The Catholic solution is, of course, instilling the virtue of chastity early in the young person’s life. Then follow it up with sustainable support; helping girls finish school, find decent work, and fulfill their potential. These are key steps to help whole communities and countries rise out of poverty.
The Conundrum:
The fact is, the teenage pregnancy rate in Uganda is staggering. But there is more to the conundrum of young teenage girls and the volume of pregnancies, though.
The obstacles are multi-faceted. This goes beyond the stigma of poverty-driven social conditions, uneducated girls, and rampant abuse issues causing the skyrocketing volume of pregnancies. There is another detrimental culprit that is presenting itself. It’s the social acceptance of common sexual activity outside of the bonds of marriage. Other international organizations present a myriad of birth control options to these young girls as the answer to alleviating the crisis of teenage pregnancies which ultimately, they say, causes poverty.
For example, institutions such as the United Nations Office of the Secretary General’s Envoy on Youth (UNFPA) delegate young girls as Ambassadors in a program designed to infiltrate secondary girls’ schools and teach messages of “responsible sexual activity” using birth control. They promote the philosophy in this way: the ambassador girls’ message makes them ambassadors not just of Uganda’s development, but of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to eliminate poverty everywhere. It’s a giant broad brush with a lot of financial backing, teaching a tainted moral solution to young girls who are dealing with life-altering circumstances.
In other words, they profess to eliminate poverty by using birth control.
Turning the cultural tide is a long, grueling process: one wholesome, dormitory at a time. Keep praying.
