Age Africa tips girls on career choices

Advancing Girls Education in Africa (Age Africa) has equipped secondary school students in Mchinji District under their scholarship programme with skills to make informed career choices as they prepare to transition to tertiary education.

The organisation’s district officer Lessenia Chikho said that equipping the girls with structured career pathways is critical to ensuring informed and purposeful transitioning from secondary education to college or university.

She said: “This is an important stage where students require timely and reliable guidance to understand the relationship between their academic performance, personal interests, emerging labour-market demands and available career pathways and training opportunities.

The girls follow a presentation. | Chrispine Msiska

Age Africa’s Malawi End-to-End School Programme supports students with comprehensive secondary and tertiary scholarship packages that includes tuition fees, accommodation, meals, stationery, laptops and stipends, ensuring that the beneficiaries are fully supported academically and socially during their university education.”

Mchinji district gender officer Daisy Khanje urged the students to utilise the bursaries to achieve their goals.

One of the beneficiaries, Grace Banda from Ludzi Girls Secondary School, praised the career pathways training, saying it will help the scholars to minimise uncertainty, reduce skills mismatches and enable young people to make strategic decisions that will enhance their employability.

Another beneficiary, Happiness Banda, from Magawa Secondary School, said coming from a poor family, chances of completing secondary education were slim; hence, she thanked AGE Africa for the support.

The two-day retreat brought together 50 Form Four girls under the End-to-End Education Programme running with funding from Philip Morris International