Girls to School continued to advance this week as we received word that the IRS had certified us as 501(c)3 Charitable organization.
Education for girls. Microloans for women.Two tools with one goal: an end to poverty.
Almost half the children in the world are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, over 93 million children are out of school – the majority: girls.
Girls to School is addressing this injustice in West Africa through established local organizations that create opportunities for girls to obtain a quality education, and women to obtain access to credit to catalyze income-generating activities.
The education and microcredit programs also have indirect effects on the community. Both men and women are seeing the importance of girls’ education and how it can help alleviate the realities of poverty. The mothers in the microcredit programs are teaching other women in the community the skills they've learned. A husband of one of the mothers laughed the first time he heard about his wife joining a microcredit group. Today he works with her at her stand in the market because he saw how she has been earning a steady income.
What does your support do?
- $200 scholarship sends a girl to school for one year.
- $50 provides clothes, food, and tutoring for a girl in school for one year.
- $25 gives a woman a loan for economic development.
- $5 provides basic school supplies for a girl for one year.
When you put all of the girls in the world in school and you give all the young women access to the labor market, it’s the number one thing you can do, that is supported morally across all cultures, to slow population growth and increase income. Empowering women. It’s not accident that Rwanda has quadrupled its per capita income in the last ten years, coming out of that genocide, and has the only parliament in the world that’s majority female and women have total access to the economic and political life of the country.
You can watch the whole interview, including his discussion of the Clinton Global Initiative that Coumba will participating in, here.
Update: The Clinton Global Initiative has announced that ANFE and Girls to School’s commitment, “Empowering Girls and Women in Mauritania” will be featured on stage at the Clinton Global Initiative’s Fifth Annual Meeting. According to the Clinton Global Initiative “Your commitment was selected from a larger pool of member commitments as an exemplary approach to addressing a specific global challenge.”
Coumba Dieng, director of Girls to School partner organization Amenons Nos Filles a l’Ecole has been invited to attend the Clinton Global Initiative. The Clinton Global Initiative has kindly offered to pay her travel expenses and to wave the event $20,000 fee. At the event Coumba will be presenting the commitment of Girls to School and ANFE to expand their efforts at providing girls in Mauritania educational oppurtunity. This is a last minute invitation so we will be working hard to get her Visa and travel plans made quickly.
Update: Coumba has recieved her visa and will arriving in New York Sept. 20th. A week later she will travel to Kansas City to meet with Girls to School and fundraising events here.
An entire issue of the NY Times magazine was dedication to women’s rights. You can read the main article here.
“In many poor countries, the greatest unexploited resource isn’t oil fields or veins of gold; it is the women and girls who aren’t educated and never become a major presence in the formal economy. With education and with help starting businesses, impoverished women can earn money and support their countries as well as their families. They represent perhaps the best hope for fighting global poverty.”
Check out this video. We didn’t make it but we really, really like it.
