Empower girls in Niger for change via education

Our girl empowerment program has many facets including promoting an entrepreneurial culture. The most important step to fostering such a culture is to teach our girls to question since this is something that does not come naturally to them. In their families and at home, they are not encouraged to question. Instead they are encouraged to comply without questioning anything or anyone. Yet, the essence of entrepreneurship is the habit of asking why and then coming up with a better solution.

Our program’s initiative has nothing to do with changing the national curriculum, but everything to do with strengthening the manner in which the curriculum is taught and bringing the content to practical life. The goal is to make our girls think as opposed to merely memorize and execute. We want them to be able to do something useful with the information and knowledge they receive at school.

We put a few questions to the Home Economics teacher about promoting an entrepreneurial mindset and this is what she had to say.

So work, resilience, and creativity are important? Yes, you have to keep on working regardless of mentalities and taboos. We need more female success stories!

More women helping one another? Yes, because when some girls succeed, they don’t necessarily want to help other girls! We need to break this jealousy barrier if we want to really move forward.

Do the girls want to become entrepreneurs?Absolutely! They really want the change to happen in their lives.

What about gender inequalities? Education of women is the key and also how we women educate our sons. We have to bring up our sons differently, to teach them equality at home in a concrete way. As women, it is our responsibility to change our sons’ mentalities. Yet, very often we demand gender equality at our work places, but at home we are not even aware of the fact that we are bringing our sons up the old way, the way our mothers and grandmothers did!!!

Admittedly, not every one of the girls we sponsor will become an entrepreneur, however the characteristics of entrepreneurship – problem solving, action orientation, creativity, being socially-conscious and responsible – are important for their everyday lives. Hence the target of our girls’ empowering program is to see all of our girls employable, studying further, or equipped to start their own businesses in the future. We are counting on your generous donations no matter how big or small to help us do that!

Thank you for joining us and supporting the development of this great program for such a worthy cause!

Many of the girl students sponsored by our association are suffering from hard working conditions at home, obliging them to devote themselves to many chores for the family rather than being able to study. Another problem is the study space at home, which is often non existant, obliging many girls to study in the middle of a farmhouse courtyard outside. These conditions are obviously far from favorizing adequate academic study results and very unmotivating for girls who are trying to make a difference and use their potential to further their studies and receive diplomas. 

Hampaté Bâ School administrators and teachers meet with parents and send them report cards to advise them of their girls’ progress. But this is not enough ! In order to correct the girls’ poor study possibilities due to working conditions at home, our Association has advised teachers and administrators to consult with parents to develop an effective family-school partnership and find solutions to this dilemma. 

To walk the talk, the school recently organized a meeting between the  Home Economics teacher and mothers of our scholarship girls, the objective being to find ways to improve the girls’ home conditions.

The school administration carried out visits to some homes, and discovered that the girls were expected to do many chores and this distracted them greatly from doing their schoolwork. Indeed, by the time the girls finished some of the home chores, they were too tired to do their homework. Moreover, homes visited did not have enough space and the number of family members occupying the house made it impossible for the girls to work properly. Also, these homes were located in communities with no public libraries and so the girls were unable to do research required by their teachers.

Very few students working at home, establish regular and systematic study habits and these girls are the very ones who need such habits the most, commented the Home Economics teacher.

In view of all the drawbacks from working at home in very unfavorable conditions, we are very happy to announce that the school administration has decided to hold supervised study sessions in the school library and in the computer room after school hours starting next month. This is really breaking news and is sure to help the girls out and encourage them even more to advance in their studies and improve their results.

Thanks to this change, girls will be able to stay at school to do their homework, will feel safe and undisturbed, will have a supervisor who can help them out with problem areas, and will be able to concentrate on their studies. We are very thankful to the Hampaté Bâ School administration for accepting the girls to be in the school’s library and computer room to take full advantage of the resources necessary  to do research on various subjects.

Thank you for supporting our girl empowerment project !! These girls deserve the right to have an education and through your contributions, we will be able to offer them a convenient space conducive to their continued studies.