Blog
Meet Fousseyni Diakité, a 22-year-old from Sebela. Fousseyni graduated from Tim Gibson Middle School in Sebela and now attends the IPR Agricultural School in Katibougou, Koulikoro region, where he is studying animal production. Thanks to a new Hope Grant from Mali Rising Foundation’s donors, he is already starting his livestock business.
Earlier this month, Mali Rising hosted one of our Teacher Peer Meetings – gatherings of 7 or 8 teachers from different schools who learn from each other for the day. Teachers volunteer to present a sample lesson and their peers critique their work – providing both positive and constructively negative feedback. After this most recent Peer Meeting, I talked with one of the participating teachers, and recorded his thoughts on the peer meeting and his work…
A key, new part of our Girls’ Project focuses on helping participating girls learn to read – and to love reading! This campaign -- Great Girls Read – works with girls all school year long to help them improve their reading skills and find joy in reading fun and engaging short pieces designed just for them. As the school year ends, the girls competed in a reading contest and crowned their top readers!
Keeping students healthy is tremendously challenging at schools in Mali because of the lack of running water and a lack of hygiene education. Mali Rising has a small Health Project which focuses on providing basic tools and handwashing education to address one of the simplest health solutions – good hand hygiene!
In late October, I had my first chance to visit a Mali Rising partner school. As a brand new staff person, I was so excited to finally see first-hand what we do and meet the great teachers and kids we work with. For my first trip, I went to the village of Sebela, which is home to Tim Gibson Middle School.
In most rural villages in Mali, women play a fairly important role in taking charge of children's school fees. But to save money, many men prefer to enroll only boys in school and prefer girls stay at home with their mother. Yet who pays the students' tuition fees? In the majority of our schools, women pay school fees. To raise funds for the fees, women may cut firewood, pick shea nuts to make shea butter, grow vegetables in gardens to sell at the market, or grow. These hard-working mothers can do amazing things for thier kids…with just a tiny bit of help!
Although girls in Mali want to stay in school, it is really challenging for them to stay there. There are many obstacles to girl’s education, such as early marriage, forced marriage, long distances to walk to school, rapes, and sexual abuse. This is especially true in rural areas. As a result, many girls drop out of school in Mali each year. This isn’t a failure of the girls, but instead a failure of the whole community — everyone should be involved in helping girls be educated. Our Girls Project works to make sure parents are invested in their daughters’ education, but we also work with the boys in our schools to make sure they are allies to their girl peers.
During this uncertain pandemic time, Mali Rising is working in five of our partner villages to test take home workbook as a tool for keeping students learning when schools are closed due to the pandemic. One of the villages where we have done this work is Sebela. We recently visited with the high scoring workbook student of Sebela, Konimba, and her father.
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