To unlock the power of education in breaking the cycle of child marriage, it’s critical to reassess who we are educating and what we are teaching them. As education is synonymous with awareness, will it suffice to simply provide educational resources as child marriage solutions without educating parents and families on their value? Child marriage is never a child’s dream but an unchosen reality imposed by societal and financial circumstances.
To drive sustainable change that eliminates child marriage, we need to focus on the root causes that give rise to this issue, robbing children of their childhood. This article explores the reciprocal relationship between lack of education and child marriage, how education can combat it, key implementation strategies, and the challenges that remain.
Understanding The Relation Between Child Marriage And Lack Of Education
Child marriage is a human rights violation that hinders girls from realizing their full potential. This harmful practice is strongly linked to a lack of education, poor health, limited access to resources, and gender inequity. One of the most significant consequences is the abrupt end to schooling that often follows child marriage.
In many developing countries, marriage and education are seen as incompatible, with decisions to withdraw a girl from school and marry her off frequently occurring simultaneously. These choices are largely shaped by societal perceptions of education’s value and the availability of job opportunities for educated girls.
Education as a tool to prevent child marriage
The concept of using education as a tool to prevent child marriage is twofold. While it is important to ensure access to education for girls so they can enroll and complete their studies, the first step begins with educating their families and communities, who serve as key decision-makers in underserved households.
Educating parents and households
To determine what parents and households need to be educated about, we must first examine the underlying factors that compel families toward early marriage. Deeply rooted in harmful gender norms and widespread poverty, child marriage often becomes a survival strategy to escape from financial burdens.
Empowering communities through education, economic support, and awareness programs can help break the cycle of child marriage. It can only be achieved by educating them on the long-term consequences of child marriage, highlighting the health risks that could be involved. Providing financial incentives for girls’ education, linking families with livelihood opportunities, and ensuring legal enforcement against early marriage, alongside shifting societal norms through advocacy, can create sustainable change and protect girls’ rights and futures.
Educating girls and adolescents
According to UNICEF’s 2022 global report, The Power of Education to End Child Marriage, completing secondary school could reduce child marriage rates world-wide by two-thirds (66%). Keeping girls in school is a proven strategy for child marriage prevention.
Empowering girls with education about the health risks of early pregnancy and the cycle of poverty linked to child marriage is crucial in helping them make informed life choices.
Key Strategies For Preventing Child Marriage Through Education
To end child marriage, girls and their families must envision a brighter, more promising future. Education, widely recognized as the most effective factor in delaying marriage, provides this opportunity. The key strategies to combat child marriage through education are:
Ensure girls complete secondary education
While primary schools are still abundant in underserved regions, access to secondary education remains a significant challenge for girls. Quality education, particularly at the secondary level, imparts knowledge, develops skills, and empowers girls to pursue employment.
We must ensure the availability of quality education resources and the efforts needed to enable girls to attend secondary school through mass awareness campaigns and targeted interventions.
Provide vocational and life skill training to girls
By linking girls to vocational programs like tailoring, nursing, driving makes them financially sustainable to support their own education. Besides this, teaching girls basic skills like literacy, numeracy, communication, health management, problem-solving, and financial literacy, they can become more confident and capable. Connecting with peers through capacity-building initiatives and mentors also helps reduce social and economic isolation.
Educate and engage parents and community members
Families and community leaders typically decide when and whom a girl marries. Educating them through meetings, door-to-door visits, or public announcements about gender equity and the impacts of child marriage on a girl’s health and future can drive change. With this knowledge, adults’ attitudes shift, making them more likely to challenge traditional expectations.
Provide economic support and incentives for girls and families
Parents may marry off daughters early for financial reasons mainly to reduce household expenses. Economic support for low-income families can help reduce child marriage. Offering incentives like educational loans, scholarships, or employment opportunities for parents can provide immediate relief and increase a girl’s perceived value through skills that lead to future income.
Challenges Of Preventing Child Marriage
The biggest challenge of child marriage is the lack of educational awareness in communities, perpetuated by deep-rooted poverty. While child marriage prevention strategies, targeted interventions, and quality education can help stop forced child marriages, they have limited power to prevent early marriages resulting from mutual understanding between families. These practices can only be uprooted when there is a dynamic shift in community attitudes through constant awareness sessions, allowing them to break free from the constraints of gendered parenting. Another significant challenge is the presence of societal traditions that pushes parents to marry off their girls early led by the fear of community judgements. It can only be eradicated when the entire community is enlightened on the consequences of child marriage including health-risks, and the opportunities the girls are missing out when they stay out of schools.
Cry America’s Efforts To Combat Child Marriage Through Education
By empowering communities and families through education, awareness campaigns, and engagement, CRY America aims to break the cycle of child marriage and create opportunities for children to lead independent lives.
- Adolescent girls’ collectives: Forms collectives to educate communities on the health, social, and legal impacts of child marriage.
- Awareness campaigns: Organize targeted campaigns to raise awareness about the consequences of child marriage for families and children.
- Connecting to government programs: Links children to government initiatives, providing them with educational opportunities.
- Empowering families with employment opportunities: Guides families toward income-generating options like kitchen gardening and other employment programs to reduce financial pressures.
- Enrolling and re-enrolling children in schools: Counsels families and potential child brides through targeted interventions to enroll or re-enroll in school and organizes support classes to help children bridge the educational gap.
- Conducting vocational programs: Links adolescent girls with different vocational programs to groom them with essential skills and provide them an exposure.
Cry America Preventing Child Marriage Through Targeted Intervention
While working with the Kalapandhari Magas Vargiya and Adivasi Gramin Vikash Sanstha (KMAGVS) project in Maharashtra, CRY America encountered an adolescent girl, Nandini*, who had been forced to drop out of school in 9th grade and marry early due to financial constraints.
As a member of KMAGVS’s children’s collective, she was counseled by the team to participate in community radio broadcasts on Akashvani, organized by the project members. Gaining confidence and support, she began advocating for girls’ education and sharing her views with her community. The project team also worked with her parents, emphasizing the importance of education, eventually convincing them to cancel her early marriage and re-enroll her in school.
The 16-year-old girl went on to excel in her 10th board exams, securing the first rank in her school.
Name changed to protect child’s identity.
Conclusion
India has made significant progress in reducing child marriage, with the percentage of child marriages falling from 49% in 1993 to 22% in 2021, according to Harvard School of Public Health. However, the journey is far from over. CRY America continues to tackle the cultural, financial, and social barriers that sustain child marriage.
By supporting CRY America, you can help protect children from the harmful effects of child marriage. Donate now to make a lasting impact and help us end child marriage together.
Recommended for you
