In male-dominated societies, girls need options to the traditional paths of early marriage and motherhood. In Zimbabwe, where 18.6% of girls aged 15–19 years either are mothers or pregnant with their first child, and 21.7% are married, mentors play an increasingly vital part in providing vulnerable girls with positive choices on how to lead their lives.

From 2007 to 2009, 578 vulnerable Zimbabwean youths, including 408 at-risk girls, received vocational and life skills training as part of the Out-of-School Adolescents Support program. Placed in vocational training programs, participants were exposed to Junior Farmer Field Schools. Parents often pass down agricultural techniques to their children; however, the widespread AIDS epidemic has truncated much of this generational transmission of knowledge. Learning best farming practices in this program, though, empowered the girls—the bulk of responsibility for household nutrition falls on girls and women—to choose how to best provide for themselves and others in their care.

Exposure to positive female mentors, such as agricultural extension agents and program graduates, offered the girls new perspectives on their future. Equally important, the girls developed relationships with their peers in a supportive environment. These safe spaces allowed them to explore issues of concern, a valuable form of psychosocial support.

The combination of child rights and life skills education with vocational training empowered these girls to make informed decisions about their lives. Many girls stated that the improved knowledge about their rights, including the ability to identify abuse and where to get help in case of abuse and rape, was invaluable. Their increased crop production and income also provided additional financial security. The girls’ feelings of self-determination extended into their views of marriage: They reported feeling they had greater freedom in choosing whom and when they would marry.

Play is essential to children’s physical, language, social, and emotional development. It unlocks imaginations and gives children a vehicle for processing intense emotions. Caregivers, though, may mistakenly believe that play requires costly toys, or they simply may be unfamiliar with when and how to engage children.

In Tanzania, though, caregivers are transforming scraps of cloth into toy rabbits, used bags into balls, and plastic bottles filled with pebbles into makeshift rattles for babies, thanks to the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation-funded THRIVE project. Through this program, more than 1,232 caregivers are learning positive parenting skills that include how to make their own toys with locally available materials.

Furthermore, THRIVE is helping pregnant caregivers and those caring for children through age 5 years discover how to give children the best possible start in life. During routine home visits, trained community health workers guide caregivers through a curriculum that makes the most out of the essential window of opportunity for cognitive and emotional development during a child’s formative years.

Participants learn about developmentally appropriate nutrition and health, and better ways to manage stress. They also learn positive parenting techniques that stimulate young minds through a play-based approach to learning and discipline methods that foster thought and shy away from customary corporal punishment. Lessons focus on the importance of exclusive breastfeeding, vaccines, proper nutrition, the different stages of development and how to best engage children, alternatives to spanking, the use of songs and poems to stimulate language development, and how to play with their kids.

Similar CRS positive parenting initiatives have been put into place across six African countries; the Government of Zambia adopted one such initiative as its national training curriculum. CRS also developed an eight-session training guide for positive parenting that seven African countries have adapted for use.