Who is Doris?
Doris Audax, is a 21 years old Tanzanian youth, confident, passionate, eloquent and visionary young lady who is advocating for girl child rights and championing the end of violence against girls in her community.She lives in Nzega magharibi a ward found in Nzega District of Tabora Region
She was among the girls who benefited from Msichana Initiative’s VOICE funded outreach activity aiming at building agency and amplify the voice of out of school girls in Tabora and Shinyanga. under their community platforms know as “Msichana Cafe”. This training included 100-out of-school girls representing girls who were child brides, teen mothers, former child brided, few survivors of early pregnancy and girls with special needs in Nzega. During the training five of them were selected to become leaders of Nzega msichana café platform, and Doris was selected the chairperson.
Through her firm leadership Nzega-Msichana Cafe have been able to collect cases of girl abuse, report them to responsible authorities and with assistance of Police gender desk hold perpetrators accountable. They have helped the girls who were taken out of school by their parents for different reasons to go back to school. Moreover their platform has been providing education to community members in quest to change their mindset on girls’ right to education.They also visit different schools in Nzega and talk to girls about the importance of staying in school and study.
Through her leadership they have been able to work closely with respective government officers like community development officer, police gender desk, ward executive officer and time to time Doris is invited to represent the voice of girls in meetings convened by Nzega’s local government authority.
In promoting and advancing girls’ rights in Nzega community, they face a number of challenges like lack of cooperation from victims, she added that, sometimes girls hide the truth about the true perpetrators. Some of the parents protect the accused perpetrators and wish to finish the cases of girl’s violence at home.
Her word to the government is to end the problem of girl’s violence and this will be possible through deliberate effort to expand the knowledge on child rights and enact laws to promote and safeguard the rights of girls.
What is Msichana Café?
Msichana café are informal community platforms involving community members to discuss challenges and problems facing girls and ways to overcome them. They provide social accountability mechanism for girls issues and offer space for community members to engage in the prevention, protection and response of issues facing young girls in their areas, such issues include teen pregnancy, early marriages, girls’ right to information and others.