Yumbe, Uganda | NEW CORRESPONDENT | Sixteen-year-old Ayola Susan (not real name), a primary six student at Yumbe Primary School, witnessed and experienced firsthand domestic violence at home.
Like many, Susan lived a normal life in the village of Yumbe District at a tender age. However, things changed drastically when the father started beating the mother repeatedly.
The violent episodes were followed by abandonment when the parents separated over Gender Based Violence (GBV).
Filled with tears, Susan narrated her emotional ordeal to the audience during the Brave Girls Festival held in Yumbe District at Boma Grounds on 28th September 2026, organised by a consortium of organisations under the Protect SRHR Project, including International Rescue Committee, World Vision, Reach A Hand Africa, and Humanity Inclusion, with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
“I have experienced this before, when my father used to beat my mother. It reached a point where my father divorced my mother. Because of the things my father used to tell my mother, my mother refused to help us. She decided to go to Cuba and stay there when I was still young,” she narrates.
She continued, “My father also refused to help us. He decided to go away and leave us alone, suffering. He rented a house and stayed there with another woman.
At that moment, we felt helpless, and I decided to drop out of school because there was no one paying my school fees. Whenever they sent us home because of school fees, I would go home, and there would be no one there to help us, not even me.
To get the things I needed, I decided to look for work. I got a job at a hotel washing utensils. They paid us UGX 2,000 per day.
Later, one of my teachers, Mr. Richard, found me at the restaurant and asked me why I had dropped out of school, and I told him everything that had happened. He decided to help me. He tried to call my father and talk to him, but he refused to help us.
Up to now, my father has refused to help us, but Mr. Richard is still helping me.
What hurts me more is that sometimes he can say, ‘I can pay your school fees,’ but he does not. When they send us home because of school fees, he will just say, ‘The money I have is for food. But for school fees, you have to go and look for it’.”
Susan is among the many girls in the room who shared their experiences.
The festival theme, Amplifying Girls’ Voices, Amplifying Girls’ Power and Potential, gave an opportunity for girls to share testimonies ranging from GBV, Sexual volience, among others. It was such an emotional moment.
Gender Based Violence stood out as the major factor affecting their lives. Gender based viloence is one of the drivers of girl child issues.
Kinawa Modest, Protect SRHR Project Coordinator, further explained that these issues emerge at the household, community, and institutional level, and hence the need to address them here.
“This is why we have such an initiative of Brave Girls, bringing together parents and cultural leaders, among others, for young girls who speak out so that solutions are gotten at the level,” he said.
For Ijosiga Abubakar Muzamul, Senior Assistant Chief Administrative Officer, Yumbe District, there is a need for increased funding in the district to enhance awareness and sensitisation on Sexual and Reproductive Health issues
“We have continued to lobby for funds to conduct awareness campaigns on GBV, especially in schools and among parents. Our funding is over UGX 72 billion allocation, and over 35 billion is salary; the balance goes to capital development and software activities, including awareness creation, sensitisation of stakeholders on government programs such as PDM, Emoyooga, Youth Livelihood, which contribute to curbing GBV,” he explained.
“As a district, over UGX 2billion is needed to streamline awareness creation on these issues,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Chief Guest, Hajjat Medina Naham Ojale, Director, Finance and Administration, NRM party, further condemned marrying young girls at a young age, while advising to ensure girl-child education to curb the vice.
“The only way to manage child marriages is by keeping them in school. There is nothing as important as keeping girls in school. Let us join hands to support the education of a girl child,” she said.
Representing the Assistant District Health Officer, Ms Maturu Irene, a midwife at Health Center III in Yumbe, spoke on key drivers of maternal deaths and early marriages in the district.
These include delayed decision to seek care, delayed referral, transport, inadequate birth preparedness, teenage pregnancy, non-institutional deliveries, gaps, among others.
She called for improved access to adolescent SRH services by expanding youth-friendly services, strengthening a safe learning environment by supporting schools to deliver comprehensive sexuality education, and reintegrating adolescent mothers into education, among others.
Yumbe is one of the districts in Uganda with a high rate of teenage pregnancies. According to the district’s Health Management Information System (HMIS), the numbers peaked significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, exceeding 7,000 cases recorded over a short multi-month lockdown period. By the 2023/2024 financial year, the figure was estimated at 5,740 cases.
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