Raising the Age of Marriage for Young Girls

This initiative involved three core components, one of which was financial support to help transition girls from primary to secondary school, and a second of which was scholarships for 3 classes of 20 secondary school graduates at the AITAM Welfare Organization in Dhaka, a paramedic training institute. The year-long paramedic training course draws on face-to-face interactions to prepare the girls to work in both clinic and community settings. They are trained in maternal and child health care, family planning, and other basic health services.

To convince families of the problems associated with early marriage and the importance of education, and to engender community support for the project, organisers carried out numerous local advocacy meetings. With help from Swanirvar, a Bangladeshi non-governmental organisation (NGO), Pathfinder held meetings to inform girls in the project area about the benefits of education and delaying marriage; the goal was to inspire hope for their futures and educate them about the dangers of early pregnancy. At these meetings school uniforms and supplies were distributed and officials such as the upazila nibrahi (executive) officers, the education officers, the upazila health and family planning officer, headmasters, teachers, parents, and religious leaders spoke about the risks of early marriage and the importance of keeping girls in school. Organisers believe that the attendance by and participation of local officials gave great credibility to the message for the students and parents in attendance and underscored the value of girls' education. The meetings garnered much local media attention, further spreading the message for girls to delay marriage and stay in school.

The strategy of generating the involvement of prominent local personnel in supporting the project is echoed in future plans for communities involved in the project. The upazila nirbahi officer in Austagram, Pronab Kumar Roy, plans to address the issue of the quality of local education in a meeting with the headmasters, teachers, local elites, parents, and students to discuss the problem and develop solutions. In addition, religious leaders are incorporating messages about the dangers of early marriage in their madrasah classes and in their prayer services and weekly meetings at the mosque. For instance, Rezaul Karim Salim, head of a madrasah (Muslim school) in Austagram, talks to parents about the importance of keeping their daughters in school and says the ones who can afford it, do.

Girls, Education, Economic Development, Maternal Health.

According to Pathfinder, parents in Bangladesh often apparently feel pressured by cultural values to marry their girls at a young age when they can no longer afford the cost of schooling them. Early marriage is more common among the economically poorest girls in Bangladesh than girls from wealthy families. The median age at first marriage among women 20-24 years old in the lowest wealth quintile is 14.6; girls in the highest quintile marry at a median age of 18.3. Newlywed couples are often under pressure from families to prove their fertility soon after their union. Forty-six percent of married girls aged 10-14 and 33% of married girls aged 15-19 have never used contraception. The birth interval for adolescent mothers (27 months) is also significantly shorter compared to all women (39 months). More than a third of adolescent births occur within an interval of less than 24 months.

The connection between education and girls' health is illustrated by this observation from Pathfinder: "Women without formal education have little say in family decisions [such as the decision about when and whether to have children] both because they have no income of their own and because they lack the skills, confidence, and knowledge necessary to negotiate with their husbands and in-laws. But if girls are able to stay in school through the secondary level, they are often able to delay their marriage until they are adults."