Educate girls and fight poverty in Senegal

Our Sisters Lead, Senegal’s leadership program continues to provide opportunities for changemakers to contribute to their communities, even after they graduate from the program and high school.  When the new school year started, in early October, changemakers from previous years joined Program Assistant Khady Ndong on visits to elementary schools around the region to discuss menstrual health and hygiene with young girls in elementary school. Many of these girls have begun menstruating, but because the topic is often considered taboo in rural households, they do not understand what is happening to them. The changemakers were able to impart knowledge and skills on how to manage menstruation to the young girls and answered their questions. In addition to providing information about menstrual health and hygiene, the changemakers also serve as mentors and role models to the elementary school girls. One of the changemakers who participated in this event is now a university student studying medicine and took the opportunity to urge the audience of young girls to study hard, stay in school, and continue their education beyond high school.

At WGEP, we’ve seen firsthand how educating girls creates lasting change. Our programs, which have supported over 6,200 scholars, boast a 99% retention rate, with more students gaining literacy skills and access to critical reading resources each year. Through this work, we uplift not only girls but entire communities, driving better educational, social, and economic outcomes. Here, two Scholars in Senegal share what Sisters to School has meant to them:

Fatoumata 

Fatoumata is a recent high school graduate who participated in WGEP’s Sisters to School program beginning in 2019. Here she shares some of the challenges she faced in attending school and what attending school has meant to her.

“This year, WGEP encouraged me and motivated me which made my exams easy. The meetings with the counseling psychologists allowed me to release the pain that prevented me from working and focusing well and also gave me information on the different types of violence against women, and awakened me from certain ignorance. I endured a lot of problems but it is thanks to Women’s Global’s support that I became strong. WGEP changed my life. I could never thank the program enough. I had planned to drop out of school to go work in Dakar as a maid to help my parents, but even after graduation the program continued to help me register on campus by providing me with a cell phone that I can use to register my files with the university. WGEP changed my life. I thank the whole team who helped us. Long live the Sisters to School program!”

Siga

Siga is a university scholar who has been a part of WGEP’s Sisters to School program since 2022, when she was in her second year of high school. Here she reflects on her journey and shares where she is today:

“I really want to thank the Sisters to School program. Today I am in my first year at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, majoring in Modern Literature. Thanks to the program, I was able to take tutoring classes and get good grades in class while I was in my second and final year of high school. The program also helped me get my BAC thanks to these tutoring classes. Every year, the program gave me my registration fees and my school supplies and at the end of each month, it gave me toiletries. This year, in university, I can say that I am in good condition thanks to NSE because everyone knows that it is hard to find accommodation at the university and the program provides us with housing in comfortable safe apartments where we can be during the entire school year. Truly, we say thank you to the program Sisters to School.”