Growing up in the Kisarawe District in the Coast Region of Tanzania, Magreth was a girl who seemed capable of anything.
In primary school, she was the enthusiastic and familiar face of educational videos and fundraising campaigns for the Kisarawe Children’s Rights Club. Off-camera, she developed a love of writing by corresponding with her Plan International sponsor in Sweden. By 11, she was contributing stories to Watoto Bomba, a book for children about coping with everyday challenges.
“We told stories about how to keep yourself safe in all situations: at school or when swimming. Even how not to get an electric shock when ironing – which I wrote from personal experience!” she recalls with a laugh.
In secondary school, during a Plan International #GirlsTakeover event in which she “took over” as a program unit manager, Magreth discovered the joy of leading: “At 13, I got to conduct meetings, sign documents and do fieldwork. It was fun – but it was serious!”
Although Magreth had many talents, everyone was shocked and confused when, at age 14, she announced her intention to become a doctor.
In a community where Magreth says many girls are married and pregnant before 16, no woman had ever pursued medicine. Was it even possible? Her family worried that she’d be wasting her time. Magreth responded by adding physics and biology to her course load. “I wanted to prove everybody wrong,” she says. “I wanted to be not just an ordinary girl.”
With Magreth’s admission to Muhimbili University came hard work, long hours and the stress of paying for tuition and textbooks. But she pushed through. In a country where many regions have as few as one doctor per 100,000 people, Magreth became increasingly focused on the reality that access to health care was a struggle for many. “Often, by the time people check into a hospital, they are in advanced stages of cancer or heart disease,” she explains. “I thought to myself, ‘If I want to be a good physician, I have to prevent these diseases from happening.’”
But how?
In addition to running the university’s Students One Health Innovation Club, Magreth participated in an initiative to translate medical information from English to Swahili and publish it on a website so that non-English speakers could proactively access information about their health and well-being. The name of this project was Daktari Mkononi – “a doctor at hand.”
Last year, Magreth started working with the African Union COVID-19 Vaccination Bingwa Initiative (under the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) to mobilize youth to get vaccinated. “Young people feel invincible against COVID-19 but also fear the vaccine will sap their energy and make them infertile,” Magreth explains. “We have to understand their thinking so we can challenge it in a way that catches their attention.”
Magreth is now 27, and her mission to stop diseases before they start has brought her to the University of Dar es Salaam, where she is pursuing a master’s degree in public health. The talents she nurtured as a child continue to serve her well. Leveraging her platform as the Tanzania chapter leader for the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network, Magreth writes articles, appears on radio shows and does public speaking and advocacy work on topics related to women’s rights, reproductive health, breastfeeding and taking care of babies through depression – the issues young women in her country face every day.
Looking back, Magreth describes her journey as “very, very hard” but is encouraged by the progress she sees in her community. Some girls are going to secondary school and even university, which was unheard of a decade ago.
As a Plan International youth advocate in Tanzania, Magreth encourages this path every day – even on her day off. On Saturdays, when she returns home to socialize with family and friends and sing in the church choir, she also leads empowerment workshops for girls. For Magreth, advancing girls’ rights in Tanzania is time well spent: “When you empower someone to fight for their rights and their dreams, they also have a chance to empower others.”
In Tanzania, family and community resistance is just one of the barriers girls face when it comes to education. If there are financial challenges, girls are pulled from school. If a school doesn’t have a washroom for girls, they stay home when they’re menstruating. Early and forced marriage and pregnancy put an end to a girl’s education in over 99% of cases.
Working in conjunction with the government and community organizations, Plan International has launched the Keeping Adolescent Girls in School project in the Geita and Kigoma Regions of northern Tanzania. The project’s Year One goal was to move the needle on girls’ education by strengthening girls’ abilities to exercise their rights and make decisions about their sexual and reproductive health. A critical aspect of the initiative is engaging parents and communities in the conversation and providing practical support toward helping families educate their girls.
In Tanzania:
In Year One, the Keeping Adolescent Girls in School project…
Now in Year Two, the project continues to keep adolescent girls in school through initiatives such as savings groups, which provide uniforms, school kits and more for girls in addition to providing supports at a community level.
