“If one man can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it?”
- MALALA YOUSAFZAI
Project Poppy is our girls and womens empowerment project.
In mainland Tanzania, schools have been expelling pregnant students since at least 1959. Pregnant students expelled from or forced to drop out of school are then permanently excluded from government schools. According to government officials and educators, they cannot be readmitted to either the same or a different government school after giving birth.
Significantly, in contrast, there are rarely any repercussions for the boys or men who impregnate female students, despite laws that make clear that such individuals should be held criminally liable. At most, male students or teachers are forced to transfer to a different school. Men outside the school system are seldom held criminally accountable.
Our goals
With Project Poppy, we hope to empower girls and women in the local community and across Tanzania. Our project will provide access to education, vocational training and micro-finance loans. We will also be raising awareness in the local, national and international community about the human rights violations that the current Tanzanian government is inflicting on female adolescents in schools.
Like Human Rights Watch and other international bodies, as well as the international donor community, we will aim to;
Urge Tanzania to protect the rights of adolescent girls in schools by eliminating the practices of mandatory and coercive pregnancy testing and of the expulsion and exclusion of pregnant students.
Continue exposing how other human rights violations—such as sexual violence, the lack of access to safe abortion services, and the denial of the right to health—contribute to unwanted pregnancies among adolescents in Tanzania.
Support advocacy efforts to protect adolescents’ reproductive rights, including efforts to eliminate the practices of coercive and mandatory pregnancy testing and the expulsion and exclusion of pregnant students.
Ensure that funds allocated towards education are not supporting mandatory pregnancy testing initiatives or the expulsion or exclusion of pregnant students.
Allocate funding for initiatives that support pregnant students’ efforts to continue with their schooling during and after pregnancy.
We hope to achieve these goals with our progressive and supportive partner in Tanzania, CHETI NGO.