It's not a gender issue, it's a human right

Throughout the week, we’ve highlighted the many barriers to education for girls in Guinea.  In general, girls in West Africa are more vulnerable to HIV, violence, and sexual exploitation. However, educating a girl drastically reduces her chances of contracting HIV and becoming a victim of physical and sexual abuse.  Ensuring that girls have access to a quality education is not just a gender equality issue, but rather one of basic human rights.  

Furthermore, report after report touts girls’ education as one of the best investments your dollar can make.  Yes, we have a moral obligation to support girls’ education, but also, research proves this support to be smart economics as well.  Yet, in many places, girls are seen as an unworthy of investment or protection from their families.  This is what School-to-School seeks to change. 

Each month, the families of School-to-School girls’ scholarship recipients receive $15.96 or half a sack of rice.  From October – May, the school year in Guinea, families receive this incentive to keep their girls in school.  And the $127.68 each family receives annually will make a different.  The average income in Guinea is just $2,100 year (although even lower in the areas where School-to-School works), as opposed to $47,400 in the United States, so $127.68  is ample encouragement for families to send their daughters to school.

Community workshops garner support from parents and the community and also encourage a grass roots approach within the community to break down barriers for girls.  Girls clubs for all scholarship recipients provide girls with social and academic support to help them stay in school and excel.  

Help play a role in supporting girls.  Whether you pledge enough for one month ($15.96) or one year ($127.68), your dollar will grow.  Invest in a girl and the world will see results.

Promoting Education as Prevention

Can you read this sign?  

In rural Guinea, most women can’t. 

The more educated a young woman is, the less likely she is to become infected with HIV- and this is for a variety of reasons.  She is both more likely to protect herself and less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior. She is less likely to engage in prostitution, and research shows again and again that women who have completed primary school are more likely to use condoms and less likely to have casual partners. 

The number of HIV prevention campaigns is multiplying, however, according to the Global Campaign for Education, “research shows that a primary education is the minimum threshold to benefit from [health information] programs.”  An education is required for girls to have the skills to actually absorb and process the information.  As a secondary benefit though, education also allows women the status to be able to act on the information learned- most notably to negotiate the terms of sexual relationships and refuse unsafe sex.  Furthermore, education also reduces violence again women and increases economic opportunities for women.

A 32-country study* showed that illiterate women were four times more likely than literate women to believe that there is no way to percent HIV infection.    As shown on the table below, Guinea has one of the lowest female literacy rates in the world. 

Taken from The Girl Effect www.girleffect.org

Even worse news, unequal education, with more boys attending schools than girls, correlates with higher infection rates for both men and women. Another study showed that countries where the literacy gap between girls and boys was above 25 per cent were more likely to have generalized epidemics than countries with a smaller gaps.  

Despite the fact that general education has shown to be an important part of HIV prevention, many schools have not introduced HIV prevention into their curriculum.  In rural areas of Guinea, School-to-School implements HIV education as part of its School Health Initiative.

A young girl one of School-to-School's programs

With its Girls Education Program, School-to-School hopes to enable girls to attend school, impart them with the knowledge they need to protects themselves, and  encourage them to have the confidence to put that knowledge to good use.

To support School-to-School and  its Girls Education program, donate today. 

*Vandermoortele, J. and E. Delamonica. 2000. “Education ‘vaccine’ against HIV/AIDS.” Current Issues in Education.(1) 

The value of an educated bride

Weddings are a celebration, and this is no exception in Guinea.   

In rural areas of Guinea, a woman’s worth is determined by her marriage.  However, in villages where School-to-School works, a well-educated woman is not always worth much as a bride.  When it comes to marriage, parents are often inconsistent in their support for educating their daughters.  The general tone is:

Men and their families may be wary of a girl more intellectual than them.  (A parent)

In Guinea, the ideal age for a girl to marry is between the age of 14 and 18.  If she is receiving an education, that range becomes 18 to 30, so as to give her the chance to finish her studies.  Already, this extra time allows women to be a healthier, better mother.  

Yet, in an interview with a community leader, he expressed that a women who refused to marry is a failure.  A successful man requires an education; he is one with a good job, who supports his family and represents his village.   A successful woman manages the household, respects her husband, home, and community leaders, follows rules and traditions in order to represent her village.  Guineans are yet to draw the connection between these skills and education. 

The case of South Sudan gives us hope though.  Traditionally, a high dowry has always been paid by the groom’s family to the bride’s.  A boy’s family might pay 50 cattle (worth thousands of dollars) to its in-laws.  However, in recent trends, the more education a girl has received, the more she is worth- sometimes as much as 200 cattle.  It is also now common practice for men's parents to refund girls’ school fees to their parents at the time of marriage.  It is seen as an investment, a value. 

In communities where School-to-School works in Guinea, the message that a girl should be educated has reached most communities, but is yet to really sink in.   As you can see in the table below, Guinea has one of the highest rates of early marriage in the world. 

Table courtesy of The Girl Effect www.girleffect.org

When asked why girls’ should be educated, responses are mostly positive, but usually in very general terms. For example:

It is knowledge that solves all problems in life.  (A parent)

Education will prepare her for her future.  (A parent)

And many relate an education to good behavior:

It teachers a girl to abstain.  (A leader)
One who is educated knows how to behave.  (A parent)

It is as if community members know that education is good, but are not quite sure why.  And that is where School-to-School comes in.  Community sensitization workshops aim to teach community leaders exactly how an education prepares a woman for the future and why each additional year of education makes a difference.  As a result, perhaps more parents will pay their daughters’ school fees.  A chief might ask his son to marry an educated woman.  Another leader might allow his daughter to choose to finish school before she marries.  

It is these things that show a community what a girl’s education is worth.    Worth the school fees, worth the wait.  Worth a small donation.  Worth it to her family, her future husband, her future children, or herself. 

See what your dollar can become

N'Gamet Sylla, a Guinean mother with six children, attended a community workshop held by School-to-School in April 2011. She learned how poorly girls were doing in the local school; it was not an issue people usually talked about. 

After the two day workshop N'Gamet said, "I left with new ideas. Women can play an important role in the social and economic development of our country if they are educated.”   She continued, “For this to happen, I think we need to support the enrollment of girls in school; follow them closely; collaborate with teachers, local leaders, and families; and support the sensitization of everyone to ensure that they support girls in finishing primary school and continue to high school."

School-to-School International uses workshops to not only gain backing for and awareness of girls’ education issues in the community, but also to help the community think up ways that they can help their girls overcome the many barriers in the way of a quality education. 

N’Gamet did not go to school; she needed this workshop to encourage her to send all six of her children to school, not just her two boys.  If she sends her daughters to school, they will not need this workshop in the future; they will know the benefits of an education first hand.  That is four women who will then send their daughters to school.  And the benefits will continue.

Start with a 12 –year-old girl….

Don’t take her out of school when she is old enough to marry.

Keep her in school until Secondary school.

You can now connect her to a decent job.

Thanks to a few extra years in school, she is bringing in an extra $2,000 a year.

She can use this money for better, nutritious food for her family.  She is significantly less likely to become infected with HIV and more likely to stay healthy through her pregnancies.  She can reinvest in livestock or a small business.  She can afford proper medical care for herself and her family. She can pay her daughters’ school fees.  She will share what she knows with her friends. 

With N’Gamet’s family alone, that is $8,000 extra dollars a year in earnings circulating in the community.  That is four women down the road who will pass on their knowledge for free. 

“Forget China, India and the internet: economic growth is driven by women.” – The Economist, April 15, 2006

Donate today and see what your dollar can become when you invest in a girl. 

The walk to school is longer for girls in Guinea

Imagine a school with no toilets.

You are a student. How would it feel to know that every time you had to relieve yourself, you would have to run home? Imagine that home is miles away. Now imagine that you are a thirteen-year-old girl and you are menstruating. You have no sanitary products, so you must use the toilet every hour. For one week every month, you cannot go to school – that is if you are even one of the few girls in Guinea who are lucky enough to be in school at all.

For all children in rural areas of Guinea, getting an education is hard. While the barriers to education affect both boys and girls, these barriers consistently and disproportionally hinder girls.

School fees, uniforms, and school supplies add up and can literally put a family into debt. In large families, parents often choose a lucky few to go to school, and sons are chosen before daughters. Families in communities where School-to-School works in Guinea often have many children, and one parent interviewed said he had to resort to keeping his daughters out of school to keep his family out of debt.

Household chores are given to both sons and daughters, but again, the most difficult tasks disproportionately fall on girls. Girls’ chores, like fetching water, washing clothes, and helping in the kitchen, tend to be more physically exhausting and time consuming than boys’ chores. Household work comes before school work, so girls might not start homework until after dinner- or rather, after night falls. In a place with no electricity, this means girls cannot do homework. Even at school, teachers are more likely to ask girls over boys to perform chores like fetching water or gathering wood.

It is obvious how a lack of latrines and proper sanitation would affect girls more than boys- so much so that once a girl reaches puberty, she can be expected miss an entire week of school each month. This means that even before factoring in that girls are more likely than boys to arrive at school late because of chores, a girl will still only attend 75% of school days.

The table below shows primary school completion rates; Guinea has one of the lowest rates world wide, with only 3% of its poorest girls completing primary school.

Table courtesy of The Girl Effect:  www.girleffect.org

Great strides have been made to give girls all over the word access to education.  More and more girls are starting school, but finishing primary school remains a major challenge.  And it is clear that girls need special help and attention- in the classroom, at home, and in their communities.  

School-to-School’s Girls’ Education Program will target girls and their teachers, families, and communities.  The program will be implemented in 15 schools, and STS will also implement 5 community forums to reach out to parents, teachers, student representatives, school directors, religious leaders, and local government officials.  The objective of these workshops is to sensitize local community members to the importance of girls' education and develop community action plans to address the barriers to girls' education. STS will also do its part to overcome these barriers by providing girls' clubs and scholarships to 375 girls in these 15 schools; proven methods of improving girls' opportunities to participate and achieve in school.  

To support our program and help a girl start and finish school, please donate today. 

In honor of Mother's Day and the Global Action Week for women and girls' education, STS launches its Girls' Education Campaign May 2-8, 2011

69 Million children in the world do not go to school; most of them are girls. 

Fewer girls attend school than their male counterparts; and even fewer girls finish school.  Yet emerging research shows that girls education is one of the most cost effective development tools of our time.  The saying goes, Invest in the girl and she will do the rest.

Educated girls…

Marry later, have fewer children and earn more money. 

They immunize their children. 

They educate their children.

They are twice as likely as men to reinvest in their community.

Girls begin a ripple effect that transforms families, communities, and entire countries. 

For this reason, the Global Campaign for Education’s Global Education Week, May 2-8, 2011, aims to highlight the importance of women and girls' education.  Some 45 countries are predicted to fail to meet Millennium Development Goal of achieving education for every man, woman and child by 2015, and much of this is due to a failure to educate their girls. 

During the week of May 2-6 School-to-School will post stories about girls' education in Guinea.  We will also raise awareness of issues facing women in Guinea through our Facebook page, website and newsletter.  You will hear voices from students, mothers, and community members, and hear how our Girls Education Program can make a difference. 

This Mother's Day, honor a special woman in your life - someone who has inspired and supported you to discover and reach your potential.   Please consider making a contribution of $25, $50, $100 or more to School-to-School's Girls' Education Campaign to support girls' scholarships, community forums, and girls' clubs in Guinea. Our goal is to raise $5,000 by May 8, 2011, Mother's Day.

 Please check back soon for stories from Guinea!