Welcome to YMSG-ESWATINI
Our organization's team comprises of highly skilled and knowledgeable professionals. We all have a common goal – helping you!
Young Mothers Support Group (YMSG) is a nascent
organization based in Swaziland supporting young mothers. The initiative was
founded in 2018 and is currently working with more than 200 young mothers
offering support systems, trainings on economic livelihoods projects, capacity
building trainings on motherhood, parenting, SRHR, HIV/AIDS, TB, Malaria and
awareness raising campaigns on the plight of young mothers in the country.
Young Mothers Support Group (YMSG) is targeting on placing a
special focus on women and girls and we will continue to ensure that their
specific needs are addressed as part of the response to the plight of young
mothers and the devastating pandemic (COVID-19). In order to inform its
programming and ensure that the specific needs of women and girls are taken
into consideration. As indicated by recent desktop studies, young women and
girls are affected in the following manner:
–
Significant increase in women’s unpaid care roles: Women perform the vast
majority of unpaid care work—more than three times as much as men. During
public health crises such as COVID-19, this labor will often involve taking
care of sick family members, and in the case of school closures, looking after
children.
The community care givers at the community’s soup kitchens face a double caregiving burden
—one at work, and one at home. 100% of local areas care givers are women. However, in this workplace where the women volunteer their time and lives are, on average, not paid. They also risk stigmatization due to caring for Communicable Diseases affected patients.
- High risk of increased gender based violence (GBV): In Swaziland, gender-based violence is a persistent challenge, disproportionately affecting women and girls with approximately 1 in 3 females having experienced some form of sexual abuse by age 18 years, and 48 per cent of women reporting to have experienced some form of sexual violence in their lifetime.
- Increased barriers to accessing health care: Maternal health is already a critical issue for women around the world; 61% of maternal deaths occur in fragile states, many of them affected by conflict and recurring natural disasters.
- Women are largely missing from decision-making: Despite women’s contribution as community care givers, breadwinners, they are often excluded from the decision making at the local community, national and regional level, which impacts their ability to ensure their specific vulnerabilities and capabilities are embedded into the response.
- Education limitation in women: Most young women face challenges of continuing their studies after falling pregnant. Culture, tradition, religion, society, community and family identifies a way of living after a young girl becomes a young mother which influences the young mothers not to have support and access to education.
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