By Rai Farrelly | Member, Board of Directors
Dear Girls Ed Supporters,
Greetings from all of us here at Girls Education International and Project Wezesha. We're excited about an opportunity we have to increase our funding by 100% per donation! It's time for a YouthSpark Bonus Day. We hope that you'll join us, as Microsoft is planning to match your contributions - dollar for dollar! Here's how it works:
Between 12pm (EST) on Wednesday June 25th and midnight (EST) on Thursday June 26th, Microsoft will match at 100% all donations between $10 - $1,000 per donor, per project (up to $200,000). This cap at $200,000 means that funds will run out - and fast!
In addition to the 100% matching opportunity, the project with the most unique donors will also recieve $2,500! So, please share with your friends - every donation at even $10 will help us toward a potential award of $2,500. In addition, the project that raises the most money during Bonus Day will also earn an extra $2,500. So many ways to ensure that our girls in Tanzania have their scholarships covered until they graduate!
Please use the sharing buttons below to let others know about this opportunity. You can also donate by clicking the 'Give Now' button below - but wait until 12p (EST) on June 25th!
The girls we recently added last year have been in school since January. All of our girls are in Form 1, so none of them is facing any 'scary' exams this summer, however all of them are struggling and striving to balance home life and school life. For a young girl in Tanzania, this is often a delicate balance. There are many pressures that can force a girl to miss school - caring for other family members, having her period, working during harvest time, staying home to collect water when the pipes are turned on briefly, and various other reasons! We can at least make sure that school fees are not a barrier.
Nickolas Kristof recently wrote an Op-Ed piece for the NY Times in which he revisited the story of a young girl that he wrote about in 2011, who received educational support from the organization, Room to Read. He shares the story of her life, then and now, and what a difference education is making for her. Like so many of the students I meet in Tanzania, she can't imagine children complaining about getting out of bed early to go to school. Our students walk quite a way each morning and afternoon - and do so because they know education is a privilege, although it should be a right.
And why does education matter? Kristof also wrote a piece about 'smart girls' "Why are fanatics so terrified of girls’ education? Because there’s no force more powerful to transform a society. The greatest threat to extremism isn’t drones firing missiles, but girls reading books." A woman empowered is a truly a force to be reckoned with.
In Mgaraganza, I have encountered some rather surprising incidents of ignorance. One example - a man assaulted a visiting doctor because he touched his wife in 'her sex'. The doctor was run out of town. The woman? She was pregnant and the 'touching' was a routine check-up to make sure the baby was healthy and in the right position given her term. Neither she nor her husband were aware of what was happening. Education of both men and women is critical for progress - no doubt. We're focusing on the girls with this project because they are underserved in this region, with the majority of students in all classes being boys.
Information that many of us take for granted as 'common knowledge' is grounded in our educational experiences. We believe that all children should have access to an education that provides them with that 'common knowledge'. With your continued support, we will be able to make sure that our scholarship recipients stay in school until they graduate, and then they will have even greater opportunities to go to high school or vocational school, and maybe one day - university!
After my trip this summer, I'll send reports back from the girls - pictures, stories, voices, videos and reports on academic progress. I'm excited to see how their first year of secondary school has gone thus far, and I'm even more excited to share that news with you! Stay tuned!
With Gratitude,
Rai Farrelly & The Girls Ed Team
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