In Katiu Saa, the change did not begin with a donation. It began with a meeting.
Community leaders, women's groups and our team sat down to look at what was happening to girls in the community. The pattern was clear: early marriage, early pregnancy, and an education that ended around the sixth grade.
What came out of those meetings were local by-laws, rules written and adopted by the community itself, that protect a girl's right to stay in school.
The result
Child marriage in the community fell from roughly 70% to 1%. Girls returned to classrooms. Teenage pregnancy declined. Families that had treated a daughter's marriage as a financial solution began to see school as the better investment.
Alongside the by-laws, the community built a school and a CHPS health compound with our support, the two institutions that make staying in school practical.
What we learned
Enforcement matters as much as adoption. The by-laws work because chiefs, elders and women's groups hold each other to them, and because there is now a school worth staying in.
