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Mali Rising’s Girls’ Project is focused on helping girls get into school and succeed there. One key to success in school? Reading abilities! That’s where our Great Girls Read sessions come into play. Great Girls Read reading sessions are designed to help the girls improve their reading skills and find real pleasure in reading.
Sue Taylor Middle School in Diorila is one of our schools where the girls had a lot of difficulty overcoming obstacles to their education. But there are girls who still stand up and overcome those obstacles. Seventeen-year-old Mandio D. is one of the girls from Girls’ Project who decided to be agents of change in their community.
It’s a hard slog for a girl in Mali to get through the school year. That’s why at the end of each year the Girls’ Project celebrates girls’ achievements with our girls and their entire villages! These Feasts (as we call them) are fun, but also are a great way to engage parents and the whole community in a discussion about the importance of girls’ education. Read on…
As part of the Girls’ Project work, each spring we organize a session on eating and cooking healthy, local foods. This session includes preparation of a group meal with the girls. But the session is not only about food – cooking and eating together gives us a great, informal way to talk and share. While we wait for the meal to cook, we share stories around the table. Each girl tells a story that marked her, and shares her dreams and her goals. This is a very important activity that allows girls to confide and share their experiences.
As we work to help girls succeed in school, we know a good relationship between girls and boys is very important for the success of girls. In Mali, school-based violence is a large-scale problem with harmful consequences for girls, but also for society as a whole. The violence suffered by girls affects their learning, their physical and mental health, their personality and their future. That’s why February’s theme for the Girls’ Project meetings was Stopping School-based Violence.
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!
Our Girls’ Project does lots of serious work with the girls about leadership, study skills, and more. But occasionally, we need to celebrate! In April, we did just that – we celebrated our academically high-achieving girls by taking them on a field trip to the capitol city of Bamako. The girls visited the National Museum and the National Zoo. In this blog post, I want to share some fun from the museum portion of the trip.
By Hindaty Traore, Girls’ Project Manager
This month, I checked in with a group of mothers who are using their entrepreneurial skills to make sure their daughters can attend middle school and build better lives for themselves.
The Cliff and Nita Bailey School in the little village of Beneko is one of the first schools where Mali Rising’s Girls’ Project was piloted. As part of the Project, the mothers of the village received a seed grant to set up what we call a Mothers’ Loan Fund. This Fund loans money to mothers for small businesses. The interest on those loans is pooled to fund school fees for the village girls in perpetuity.
Each village’s Mothers’ Loan Fund is run by the women of the village, and so sets up its own rules and systems. Given the large number of women in Beneko, the loans are distributed every 6 months. Each woman who receives a loan receives 5,000 FCFA. After six months each woman must bring 5000 FCFA plus interest -- which is 1000 FCFA.
Each woman uses her money differently to have her own benefit and interest after every six months. I wanted to share the stories of two women – Bintou Samake and Deniba Bagayoko.
Bintou Samake’s loan
Bintou Samaké is the mother of 7 children, 5 of whom are currently in the middle school of Beneko. She was one of the beneficiaries of the first distribution from Beneko's Mothers’ Loan Fund.
When she received her loan, Bintou went by bike to get oranges from Famana, a village 10km from Beneko, to come back and sell them in Beneko. After selling her oranges she obtained 2500 FCFA as a profit. In six months, she was able to have a personal benefit of 30,000 FCFA. After six months, she returned the 5000 FCFA plus the interest of 1000 FCFA in the fund. “I sell oranges because a lot of people don't sell those here. That's why the profit is a bit high compared to other businesses in the village,” says Bintou.
Before the arrival of the project, Bintou found it difficult to pay the school fees of her five children. She saw her children expelled from school because of non-payment of school fees. She and her husband are farmers so they do not have enough resources. When the Girls’ Project Mothers’ Loan Fund came, the project paid for all the girls' school fees, which reduced her expenses. Bintou likes her side business, but she continues to farm and be a housewife.
Deniba Bagayoko’s loan
Deniba buys condiments such as tomatoes, onions, garlic, and concentrated tomatoes to sell in the village. The profit is not huge but it allows her to repay the money and interest from the Fund and still to have some extra money to set aside aside.
She also often buys cereals such as millet and maize when it is cheaper and keeps them until the price of these cereals is high, then she sells them. “The money that Mali Rising gave us helped me a lot, especially to pay the school fees for the girls because it is the women who pay the school fees for the girls but the women do not have the means to pay that. My daughter is married and her husband's parents do not want to pay her school fees. But thanks to the interest of the fund, she continues her studies,” exlplains Deniba.
Deniba Bagayoko’s last daughter in grade 9. Her daughter loves school but has failed the DEF graduation exam twice. Her daughter is married in another village 3 km from Beneko, and she has a 1-year-old child. Deniba says tat housework and the maintenance of the child prevent her from studying well.
However, Deniba takes care of her daughter’s child so that she can go to school. The daughter’s husband wants her to study but she is in the big family the household chores are enormous, so it is not at all easy. According to Deniba if there was no interest in the fund to pay her daughter's school fees, her studies would be finished because her in-laws refuse to pay. But because she utilized the Mothers’ Loan Fund through Mali Rising, they have not had difficulty paying school fees for the girls.
The women of Benkeo welcome the Mothers’ Loan Fund because it allows them to keep their daughters in school without fear of expulsion. We love to see the Funds succeed because there are just so many benefits – more girls in school, mothers that feel empowered to protect their daughters, and even a little “extra” money for the family home.
By Merritt Frey, Executive Director
Because female students in Mali face special barriers, we have a robust Girls’ Project to help support their special needs. But research shows improving girls’ access to education takes action from the whole community…not just the girls. So, part of our Girls’ Project work focuses on engaging boys from our partner schools in discussion about gender issues and how they can actively support their fellow students who happen to be girls.
This work focuses largely on peer meetings where boys gather for facilitated discussions about human rights, girls’ education, and their role in knocking down obstacles for girls. The meetings are lively, with boys actively debating big ideas and sharing their ideas for building a more equal world.
In November, we hosted these discussions in three of our partner villages — Diorila, Sebela, and Zambougou. In each case, 40 to 60 boys came out to learn and share their own thoughts. Adama Kone, the Mali Rising staff person who leads these discussions, noted how much fun was had…and it wasn’t only because cake was provided!
“These young men can be allies for girls in their classroom today, and in the future they can speak up for women in their families and in Mali as a whole. In Mali, change starts with discussion and debate among the community, and these boys really engaged,” said Adama.
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