Rose is an 18-year-old girl currently living with her 14 month-old baby and her mother in Alibi, a village in Loro sub-county of Oyam District in Uganda. When Rose was a child and finished primary school, she was accepted and enrolled in secondary school. However, Rose never had the opportunity to progress to secondary school, because her father, an angry and desperate man who was often very rude to her mother, refused to pay her school fees. Rose’s father ultimately left the family for another woman and moved to another village.
Rose recalled, “After all that, I was so bored and lonely at home. I had no one to talk to except for one boy who would come and chat with me. We had dated while I was in school, but we never had sex. After all this, I needed a shoulder to lean on. So, I accepted having sex with him. He never told me to go back to school. He did not even care.” When she was nearly 16 years old, Rose got pregnant. After she told her boyfriend, he disappeared, leaving her solely responsible to raise their child. However, things began to change for Rose when, in March of 2016, BETTER OUTCOMES-trained para-social workers (PSWs) told her about Girls First Clubs during a community sensitization session.
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