When we think about development, we often like to think
about magical fixes. What can we do that will make agriculture more productive,
prevent more people from dying from preventable diseases, increase people’s
income, save the environment, promote peace, increase access to more and better
education, etc.? What can we do that
will just fix it all?
Often times in these musings however, we are reduced by
those more experienced (or more jaded) in development work to thinking that
there is no magical fix; there is no straw to break the camel’s back or
epicenter of the domino network that will allow a single action to send shocks
through the entire system.
But the truth of the matter is: that is not exactly true. There are a few not-so-secret secrets in
development work, a few things we acknowledge may not fix every problem
completely, but we know, empirically, will be beneficial for just about everything
and everyone either directly or indirectly.
One of these is the girl’s education.
When we educate girls, we are improving the lives of
everyone in the community. We are
creating better farming practices and increasing family income. We are limiting
family size and increasing resources available per family member. We are
fighting malnutrition and other childhood diseases that claim the lives of
millions of children under the age of 5. We are limiting the spread of
HIV/AIDS. We are empowering women with agency to take a stand in politics and
claim human rights. And we are increasing the likelihood that the next
generation receives an education as well so that the tradition of education may
continue within a family and within a community.
Nelson Mandela famously said, “Education is the most
powerful weapon you can use to change the world”.
I don’t know if it’s a weapon. Or even if it’s magic. But
I know that when we educate girls, we are doing something right; we are making
the future lives of those girls, their community, and this world a little
brighter.
It is for this reason that Peace Corps Senegal has
started a scholarship program for middle school and high school aged girls who
are approaching the pivotal point in their educational career where many make
the fateful decision to drop out of school or to continue their education. This program is called the Michele Sylvester Scholarship (yes, there is awkwardly only 1 "L" in "Michelle", it's not a typo). Nine girls are selected, three each from
grades 5, 4, and 3 (corresponding to grades 8, 9 and 10 respectively in the
American system). The girls fill out
applications with teacher recommendations, essays, interviews and report cards
and they are ultimately chosen based on a combination of need and merit.
In Saraya, we selected our nine girls and announced all
of their names and hometowns over the radio as a part of a radio segment all
about girls’ education. We featured interviews with local community members,
original poetry and songs about strong women (e.g. Destiny’s Child –
“Independent Woman”).
Sadly one of these girls, about to start her freshman
year, had already been married off by her parents to a man in a village 20 km
away during the summer vacation and dropped out of school for good. She had to
be replaced by the runner-up.
In October we held a congratulatory ceremony for all of
the winners. We hand delivered invitations to each girl in her home village to
request her attendance as well as the attendance of at least one family member.
On the day of the celebration a DJ came to the school grounds to play music and
a local restaurant owner served breakfast sandwiches and coffee. The principal,
several teachers and a representative of the parent-teacher association all
gave speeches about girls’ education and recognized the hard work of the girls
sitting before them. My site-mate and I also gave speeches – hers in French and
mine in Malinke – about the importance of women in development. We then called
each scholarship winner up one by one to give them a certificate, a backpack
full of school supplies that had been donated by the American embassy, school
books for their favorite subjects and two t-shirts. One shirt was for the
scholarship girl which read “I am intelligent, I am strong, I am women” while
the other was given to the supportive family member and read “I support the
education of girls”.
Now that these girls are successfully enrolled however,
our work does not stop there. These girls are hard workers, leaders among their
peers, role models among their siblings and contributing members of their
community. We can do more than just keep
them in school for another year.
My site-mate and I began a club for all the scholarship
applicants. Of the 15 original applicants invited to apply by the school principal, four have already dropped out of
school this year because of marriage or pregnancy. And so we have been left with 11.
Once a month we meet to eat snacks, drink cold drinks (basically a party),
and talk about some subject they don’t get to learn about in school, and may
not really ever have a forum to talk about. These include: identity, girl’s
education, women’s health, family planning, financial planning, domestic
violence, etc. For each activity we have designed a follow-up community
outreach activity for the girls to engage their peers in discussion about the
same things we discussed in our club.
For our very first meeting we talked about identity and had
each of the girls decorate a journal to represent themselves and their
interests. We encouraged them to use the
journal to write whatever they wanted.
In future meetings they will be invited to share things they have
written, if they desire, or they can simply keep it as a private space for
themselves. As a community follow-up activity, the girls organized a public
showing of a movie about girl’s empowerment entitled “Girl Rising” and invited
their friends to come.
In our second meeting we invited a trained midwife from
the hospital and a local birth attendant to come speak about women’s health and
sexuality. We discussed early marriage, early pregnancy and the limiting effect
it would have on their options for the future as we as all the nitty-gritty
details of sex and safe-sex. I drew several penises on the chalk board. Many
girls saw a condom for the first time.
This meeting demonstrated the need for a lot more sexual education in
the school and we are working on a plan to form a partnership between the
school and the hospital to make this happen. Hopefully our girls will be
leaders in this activity, whatever form it takes.
For our next meeting we are planning on leading a
discussion about girl’s education – the importance, the barriers, the solutions
and the personal experiences. We want
local women in several different professions to come speak as an open panel
about their work and the importance of education in their chosen career path.
After this we would like to engage everyone at the school in painting a girls’
education-themed mural on the school grounds and having a discussion about it.
These girls are amazing.
The society they live in has stripped them of a childhood at a young
age; many are the second or third mothers in their homes, called upon regularly
to cook, farm, and help raise younger siblings. And yet, they are still so very
young, still so very green and guileless in the face of this world. At first they seem quiet and ignoble, lacking
some sort of aplomb that one expects from young people surviving in such trying
situations. But little by little, through stupid games and me dancing around like
a histrionic fool for everyone’s entertainment, they start ever so shyly to
crack a smile, to chuckle, to laugh, and finally to engage, settling into their
own skin and letting their true selves be seen.
They are smart and humble and hard-working, but also silly and quirky
and kind.
It has been an honor and a privilege to get to know them
in the little time I have spent with them so far and I look forward to continue
working with them.
Here are the winners of the 2014-2015 Saraya Michele Sylvester
Scholarship:
Goundo Tigana, 15 years old, is a sophomore in high school.
She comes from a home of 16 children in the nearby village of Faraba. Her
father is a locally famous farmer and her mother is a housewife as well as a birth
attendant in training. She loves science and she wants to study medicine to
work with people living with HIV/AIDS. To this end she studies every night for
5 hours under the shade structure at her homestay where she lives while school
is in session. And all that studying pays off as she has the highest grades in
school and almost has celebrity status as the village “smarty-pants”. Despite
her fame, she is humble. She is always modestly dressed and soft spoken yet also
always engaged. She is a true leader
among her peers.
Hawa Tigana, 17 years old, is a sophomore in high school.
She is from the village of Saraya itself, the daughter of a farmer and a
housewife. It is sometimes difficult for Hawa to balance chores at home with
her school work but she is dedicated to finding time to study and to continuing
her education. Her older sister with whom she is very close (they even got
matching outfits made for Tabaski that they subsequently wore to our
scholarship ceremony) is very outspoken in support of education, having left
school earlier than desired herself, and was very proud of her sister for
earning the scholarship. Hawa adores English and Spanish classes as she
considers them to be the most important and dreams one day of being a lawyer.
Sokhona Souaré is a 17-year-old sophomore in high school.
She comes from a village around 5 miles away called Diakha Medina where her
parents are both farmers. There are 25 children in her home in Diakha Madina
although only 12 are currently in school.
During the school year her extended family lodges her in Saraya in
exchange for rice, peanuts and help around the household. Her favorite subjects
are English and Arabic because they are the easiest for her but she would like
to study science to be a midwife in order to help girls in her community learn
to avoid the early pregnancies that commonly force them to drop out of school
early.
Diouca Singoura is a 14-year-old freshman in high school.
To be frank, I am still getting to know Diouca so I can’t tell you much about
her other than that she does the Wolof Wally dance like a professional.
Although you might have to tease it out of her…
Cira Tigana, 14 years old, is a freshman in high school. She is the younger sister of Goundo Tigana
and shares all of the same intelligence, determination and humbleness. Unlike
her sister who is aimed for a career in medicine however, Cira enjoys science
but would like to be a teacher, or even the Minister of Education of Young
Girls for all of Senegal. She recognizes that girls in her community are the
victims of violence and of forced early marriages, and that a change in
behavior is therefore imperative for the betterment and development of the
community.
Ciré Danfakha is a 14-year-old freshman in high school.
There are 15 children in her compound of which 9 are currently attending
school. While many families have at least one family member that works in the
mines, in some technical trade or somewhere abroad to supply the family with a
small amount of cash, Ciré’s entire family consists of subsistence farmers. As
such, money is hard to come by and is the number one challenge for Ciré in
continuing her studies. While her
teachers remarked that she is good in every subject, her favorites are English,
History-Geography and French. Like Cira Tigana, she dreams one day of being the
Minister of Education and devoting her career to the promotion of girls’
education.
Tomboŋ Diaby, 14 years old, is in the 8th
grade. She is from the village of Saraya where both of her parents are farmers
and she lives with her 14 brothers, sisters and cousins. She is the niece of a gregarious,
self-taught, laboratory technician at the hospital, and in his wake she has
also found herself interested in medicine. She hopes to be a skilled midwife to
fight against maternal mortality, neo-natal mortality and child mortality. Additionally, her sartorial elegance is
reputable. Fortunately for me, she has agreed to help me design an outfit.
Fatoumata Dambele is a 14-year-old 8th grader.
Her father is one of the adjunct Mayors of Saraya and very outspoken about the
importance of education, particularly the importance of girls’ education, in
his community. While she receives a
great deal of moral support for her education at home, financial stressors and
housework remain difficulties. She likes all subjects and at various points in
time has claimed she would like to be everything from the Minister of Education
to a doctor. I suspect she hasn’t really decided yet (but who can judge? I’m 25
with a master’s degree and I still can’t quite decide…).
Cira Danfakha is a 14-year-old 8th grader.
Having lost both parents, she lives with other relatives in Saraya. Studying at
home can be a challenge because nobody in her family works so they are under
considerable financial stress. Additionally she also finds herself lacking a
resource at home to which she can direct homework questions. Despite these challenges, teachers have
remarked that she is good at all subjects, although she most enjoys Math. She
hopes one day to become a skilled midwife.
