By Lemuella Tarawallie
The Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs, in collaboration with UNICEF-SL, Action Aid, Irish Aid, World Vision, Save the Children, Planned Parenthood and other implementing partners, has celebrated the International Day of Girl Child (IDGC) 2024.
The global theme for this year’s celebration was: “Girls’ Vision for the Future”, and the local theme was: “Wetin gyal pikin den si fo den tumara”.
During the celebration of the International Day of Girl Child last Friday at the Family Kingdom at Aberdeen in Freetown, the National President for the Children’s Forum Network (CFN), Philipa Cride-Dole, stated that the Day was for girls to continue to raise awareness for society to know that what boys could do they could do it better.
Philipa Cride-Dole added that another reason for the International Day of Girl Child was to promote girls’ empowerment, as they were striving to build a society that would support girls.
She noted that the Ministry of Gender and Children’s Affairs and partners were joining the global community to celebrate girls because the challenges girls were facing were too many. She further noted that, “girls should stand up for themselves, they should be strong, they should focus on their dreams, they should also prioritize their education and other things that will help them to become leaders in society”.
The Deputy Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs, Hindowa Buakai Bindi, stated that as a father he expected the best for his girls and, therefore, he was wishing every girl in Sierra Leone “a happy International Day of Girl Child”.
He noted that the tomorrow they were talking about was to see “girls serve in the capacity as Government Ministers or better positions in the future.”
Hindowa Buakai Bindi stated that as Deputy Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs, he believed that 90% of children in the room were in the formal sector and that those who were not in the formal sector should also have safer spaces.
He appealed to the executive of the Children’s Forum Network to incorporate special needs children in whatever activities they would be undertaking.
This year’s International Day of Girl Child celebration was climaxed with the presentation of a position paper by the Children’s Forum Network, which is an action plan that focuses on what next for girls in Sierra Leone after this year’s (IDGC) celebration.