NUK has expanded school-based outreach under its adolescent rights support programming, reaching secondary school students with sessions covering legal rights awareness, basic health education, and early-marriage prevention.
What the sessions cover
- Plain-language explanations of legal protections against child marriage and dowry demands.
- Basic reproductive and adolescent health information, often a first formal exposure to the topic for many students.
- Where to seek help — connecting students to NUK's legal aid and counselling contacts in their district.
Why schools
Reaching girls while still in secondary school allows NUK to intervene before many of the decision points — early marriage proposals, withdrawal from school for economic reasons — that its Legal Aid & Early Marriage Prevention Program and Family Development Program otherwise address after the fact.
This outreach complements NUK's Sports for Women's Empowerment programming, with several participating schools also hosting NUK's bicycle access and self-defence training initiatives.
Looking ahead
NUK plans to expand the school outreach model to additional districts, prioritising areas where early marriage rates remain highest according to its own field reporting.