Out-of-School Parenting Girls’ Learning Pathways in Rwanda: Building Resilience through Identity Formation and Mentorship

Abstract

Large and growing numbers of young people are in neither employment nor education and training. Many of them are young mothers (termed “parenting girls” in this report). When the Commonwealth of Learning’s Open Schooling initiative heard that Rwanda was having some success in getting parenting girls back into school, it commissioned a study to get a better understanding of the learning pathways involved. Focus group interviews were conducted over several months with parenting girls who had returned to education. In these focus groups, the researchers explored how the girls’ pregnancy and subsequent dropping out of school had impacted their lives, the factors that led them to return to school and the factors that could help build their resilience to remain in school.