VUYO MKIZE
IF YOU thought having a baby while you were still at school would be easy, think again.
Pupils from two schools in southern Joburg have had a taste of what having children while still young would be like.
The Doll Project, an initiative of the Gauteng Department of Education, took place at Thamsanqa and Willowmead high schools last year to try to curb high levels of teen pregnancy. The boys and girls had to pair up and make a doll.
They then had to care for the “baby” for four weeks. The “mother” and “father” had to take turns caring for the doll during break times; they also shared the responsibility of washing and feeding the baby.
In 2009, 40 learners fell pregnant at Thamsanqa High School in Orange Farm. Last year, there were 13 and this year only six pregnancies.
Stats SA indicates that in 2009, 5 000 pupils were pregnant in Gauteng.
Tshidi Ranaka, the school’s Doll Project co-coordinator, said: “We’d have debates at school about pupil pregnancy and we tried all means to decrease the problem. In 2010, they brought in this project for a month and we did see a difference in the levels and in the children’s thinking.
“We used the library as a ‘crèche’ were we asked their parents to volunteer to monitor the behaviour of the pupils with the babies.”
Despite the initial enthusiasm for the project, however, Ranaka admitted that pupils became uninterested in caring for the doll by the third week.
“It was boring,” Nkanyezi Nkosi, a Grade 11 pupil, told The Star last week. “I couldn’t do the stuff I liked doing like dancing after school because I had to look after the baby.”
When asked whether she would consider having a child while in Grade 11, she quickly responded with a “No!”.
Ranaka said the project was hampered with logistical challenges such as finding time for teachers to check the pupils were sticking to the rules.
One of the boys, Vusi Dhlamini, said one of his greatest challenges was learning to parent with another person. Both agreed that the project helped them see the difficulties of caring for a child while still young.
At Willowmead High in Lenasia South, 35 pupils fell pregnant in 2009. But there has been a steady decline and only three pregnancies were recorded this year.
Joan van Niekerk, the manager of Childline South Africa, said the group had been promoting parenting skills training programmes in high schools for many years. The Doll Project was but one such programme.
Department spokesman Charles Phahlane said: “We are still going through the planning stages of a possible roll-out, but nothing has been finalised yet.”