Energy. Spirit. Tiny. Those are the words most people who know her associate with Elimina Litanda, a secondary school teacher and girls’ mentor at Kibugumo Secondary School in Tanzania. Even though this outgoing young woman is quite petite—so much so that some older teachers feared that her students wouldn’t take her seriously—she capably leads a group of up to 75 teenage girls in three after-school mentoring sessions each week.
Those sessions are a key component of AED’s project to support girls in secondary school in Tanzania. Litanda said that by attending AED training sessions and meeting regularly with an AED mentoring coach, she has learned about some of the greatest bar riers to girls’ academic success. For example, some families do not support their daughters’ education, and many girls are pressured to marry during their teen years.
“AED is helping me to get to know, to identify the problems that the girls and the boys are facing and the different problems around gender,” Litanda said. She added, “Now I feel like I can talk with anyone about girls’ problems and problems with society in general. I feel empowered.”
Part of the mentoring sessions focus on academic tutoring. But the more important work being done in the sessions, said Litanda, is the instruction that will help the girls succeed in life.
“We have them all work on nutrition, friendship skills, food-borne illnesses, and malaria,” she said. The most-requested topic, however, is how to stay healthy in relationships. “The misconceptions on HIV were pretty huge.”
Some of the girls thought that HIV/AIDS was only deadly if it were contracted through a curse. “I am really working with the girls over and over again about how HIV is transmitted,” said Litanda. “We hash it out in mentoring sessions, talk about it openly, and lay to rest those different old wives’ tales.”
