[caption id="attachment_5849" align="alignleft" width="300"] Ben Grey - Classroom (CC BY-SA 2.0)[/caption]

 

Child marriages in Mali, and across West Africa, are carried out to strengthen ties between families, alleviate poverty, and avoid the stigma of a girl having sex outside of wedlock [...] Yet school pupils in the region are striving to save their peers from a similar fate. Student groups are teaching their classmates about sexual and reproductive health, warning them about child marriage and teenage pregnancy, and helping vulnerable pupils and victims.