Transition from Institutional Care Into the Community : Percieved Barriers and Expectations of Adolescent Girls in Zimbabwe

"..for those who do not have parents when they leave (the institution) they will just go nowhere.." This is a statement of a young woman who has grown up in an orphanage and has experienced what it means to live outside the institution. This study talks about perceived barriers of 14-17 year old girls and the community which is mend to embrace those adolescents who have no one to turn to. They live in isolation from the community with hardly any interaction and therefore they are deprived of any knowledge about family life and cultural values that shape the community in which they live. The community has fixed ideas about girls from the orphanage, which are extremely negative and rather devastating. The subject is important for both parties, for the girls as well as for the community and it is therefore necessary to find ways of interaction.