Life skills teacher Pedro Kapirika says society has been so focused on uplifting the girl child that the boy child is left feeling neglected.
The teacher from Jacob Marengo visited Rundu in an effort to uplift some boys.
There was a time when the focus was solely on men.
This led to women and girl empowerment initiatives all over, but the end result is that the boychild is now feeling left out, says Kapirika.
“We do have in our life skills classes sanitary pads, where a girl can come and get sanity pads, but we do not have a hygiene kit for a boy. A boy will not actually come to anybody and say, You know what? I ran out of toothpaste. Would you please help me? And they have to find other means to get that resource. If he is influenced in a very positive way, he might maybe do some jobs here and there to get himself a hygiene kit, or he will do criminal activities.”
Kapirika says young boys are going through a lot, including low self-esteem, often brought about by poverty and a lack of space for boys.
“If a boy goes to school with torn shoes or a torn trouser and he sees that the other boys are looking so good, one of the things that he would try to do is seek attention by misbehaving, and he will be labelled as a troubled boy. But he is not being naughty; he is just trying to distract everybody from not noticing that he is wearing torn clothes, and he doesn’t want to be noticed that he is looking very bad.”
He says if boys’ feelings are left unaddressed, they can turn to violence, which may lead to suicide.
Kapirika is also the National Coordinator for the “Children’s Movement, an NGO aimed at bettering the lives of boys and girls.
They approached ReconAfrica, who sponsored the “hygiene kits,” which include all the basic essentials for boys like toiletries, socks, and underwear.
70 males between the ages of 8 and 22 from 12 schools in Rundu received the kits valued at over N$25,000.
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