Empower girls in Niger for change via education

 The Hampaté Bâ Home Economics Classes for our girl students are always full of surprises and last month was no exception.

The Hampaté Bâ Complex was privileged to welcome the visit of a renowned French children’s author who was traveling in Niger and staying with friends in Niamey. Mme Delphine Grinberg is specialized in writing books for youngsters which are published all over the world and which concern experimentation in the fields of science and ecology. She was happy to come to an after school class at Hampaté Bâ and the girl students were lucky to have a workshop animated by her personally, where they participated actively in fun and fascinating experiments that delighted them immensely. Naturally, it was very exciting to have a celebrity visit their school class.

In fact, the activity was so dynamic and exciting that the boys who were there after school, stopped in to see what was going on and the girls asked the boys to stay and participate in the projects also! Actually the girls were very happy to show their leadership, include the boys in the demonstrations and show them in detail the joyous experiments that they were learning to do. And of course, the girls were proud to use their initiative to explain to the boys what the experiments proved and share their newly acquired knowledge regarding protection of the planet.

The workshop included original little gestures and easy manipulations with familiar objects, surprising and colorful photos in books, toolkits presenting ecology from an active, daily, easy and fun angle. The students couldn’t resist the desire to become real eco-adventurers through these activities.

Mme Grinberg noticed that the students showed a real interest in the activities and enthusiastically reacted by volunteering to participate in front of the class and by answering questions.

“The students were dynamic, knowledgeable and interested in the experiments. I was surprised to see that they were already quite aware of problems of pollution not only in Niamey, but worldwide, and were eager to learn more. “

One of the students, Zalika, expressed her opinion: “We were so honored to have a famous person in our class. She made us aware of pollution of different sorts through different experiments. It was exciting! And we taught what we learned to the boys! ”

One of the “ecology awareness” experiments was about the different aspects of petrol including its use, the qualities and inconveniences of its derived products. To illustrate certain aspects of her presentation, Mme Grinberg used real objects, including throwaway diapers for babies. Even though most of the students’ families don’t use these, the girls were thrilled with this experiment.

According to Mariama, “I got to hold a diaper upside down with one liter of water over a boy’s head and that was a real suspense, but the diapers resisted and not one single drop escaped! The diapers absorbed the water.”

This demonstration was exciting for the students since Mme Grinberg proposed the girls to pour more and more water in a diaper held over the head of a student and pointed out the capacity of absorption of liquids.

Then she asked them to rip open a diaper to discover what it is made of and explained the irritating effect on skin that is caused by the materials inside the diaper. And finally she spoke about the problems of pollution posed by the diapers when they are used massively: water pollution and also air pollution when they are burned.

“I loved doing these activities and thinking about the problems of pollution at the same time and being aware of results of using certain products “ said Fatouma.

All in all, this workshop was a gold mine of activity and reflexion!

This opened a whole new world of possibilities and ideas stimulating the minds of our girl students which gave them a taste for discovery and an incentive for adventure !

 These fabulous projects help our girls become autonomous, be aware of the planet and the world and take initiatives and explore and make discoveries, feeding into new jobs they could dream of doing that might become a reality.

Our girls are becoming stronger and more self-confident thanks to these opportunities.

 We need YOUR HELP to continue these innovative projects.

Your donations are important and vital to us. They make a BIG difference

Anything you can give, big or small, allows us to keep offering a quality education to these underprivileged girls and give them a chance for a better future.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!