Clare and Dia, sisters and mentors, stand in front of the audience—students, parents and teachers all eagerly waiting for the performance to start. The sisters are about to expose some serious problems within the community in an effort to change the tide of life in Budondo, Uganda. They are about to introduce the Twogere Girls’ Club.
Twogere means “let's speak out” in Lusoga. The Girl’s Club aims to identify and combat the challenges young women face in everyday rural Uganda. By giving the girls a platform to speak out against inequality and the skills to be self-reliant, the empowered youth become advocates for the future.
Today, Clare and Dia are using theater as the forum to speak out to the community. The play begins with the protagonist pleading with her mother. She has no money at home to pay for school fees or other basic needs. Her mother is hardworking but unable to make ends meet.
The protagonist goes to her friends for advice. Here, the three girls act out an all too common scene: The protagonist’s friends convince her that a man will provide her basic necessities in exchange for sex. Seeing no other choice, the young girl accepts her friends’ advice and gets a boyfriend.
The girl becomes pregnant and the boyfriend abandons her. It is a likely scene that many girls face, one that often leads to early school drop-outs, STD and HIV infection, fatal abortions, and isolation. But the performance isn’t over—this is not a cautionary tale.
The play starts over again. The protagonist is faced with the same dilemmas—poverty, peer pressure, and the like. But this time the play allows for change, inviting audience members to step into the protagonist’s shoes and explore different solutions to her problems. It is explained to me that they are not allowed to replace the antagonists because “we can never change those people in our lives, we can only change ourselves.”
“we can never change those people in our lives, we can only change ourselves.”
Teacher Steve jumps into the role right when our young heroine is being pressured into taking a boyfriend. He maneuvers around their attacks and denies their suggestions.
Other audience members—men, women, boys and girls—are encouraged to participate as well. The performance becomes highly interactive. It demonstrates how young women do not face these problems alone; it is an entire community who must be engaged.
Following the performance, the leaders of the Twogere Girls’ Club have a meeting with the parents and teachers. It is another eye-opening discussion where participants learn from one another, lean on each other, and focus on how to move forward together as a community. They look to Twogere to provide the resources and opportunities to educate, inform and collaborate in order to better support the women in Budondo.
It is a transformative day—one that makes us hopeful for the future and the potential impact of Twogere. We look at these young women and see future leaders. We see the promise of tomorrow.
To support the Twogere Girls’ Club, a program under the Suubi Reproductive Health Project, visit our Crowdrise Page.
