300 Burkinabe girls saved from prostitution

Bamako- Mali (PANA) – About 300 girls have been sa-ved from prostitution in Burkina Faso, courtesy of a programme supported by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
"We have helped these girls get self-employed and then become themselves employers.
This is an encouraging experience," Mamadou Bagayoko, a UN official told PANA here Wednesday.
"In the Sourou zone in Burkina Faso, the young girls are sent to the big cities to become domestic workers.
Some of them subsequently find themselves on the streets and turn into prostitution," Bagayoko, the UNICEF education programme administrator in Ougadougou, added.
He said the girls saved from prostitution have taken advantage of formal education programmes to learn different income-generating trades.
"Girls have learnt the weaving loom and have become makers of fasso dan fani, the traditional costume.
Others have learnt the drying of vegetables, and dressmaking.
Fifteen or so girls even got together to start a small or medium-sized enterprise," he added.
Speaking alongside a conference in Bamako on the abolition of school fees, he expressed the wish that the "future mothers" would contribute to the acceleration of the education of girls in Burkina Faso.