Christina in Burkina... IN TOGO!: December 2009

13 December 2009

Click there to laugh at the Sobiloffs --->

In the month of October, I asked for your help funding a project to train select educators/ tradesmen in Life Skills and launch youth clubs. And... you did it! Thanks to you, I was able to raise the full $5007 and, in the month of November, execute the trainings in Life Skills which constitute the first phase of the project! YOU ARE AWESOME. Thank you!!!

Also, the trainings went very well! Superintendents, high school principals, vice principals and select teachers from five school in and around Tsévié (my site) met for three days of training. We focused on techniques for teaching Life Skills and challenges for affecting behaviour change in youth; gender sensitivity and strategies for attending to the differing needs of boys and girls; men as partners and girl-friendly environments; actioning planning and project implementation/ evaluation.

Now each of the five high schools has launched Life Skills classes or clubs that will touch hundreds of students and affect the tenth grade curriculum for the rest of the school year...

One of my schools is out in the bush - it was founded just two years ago and to visit, I had to bike through somebody's cornfield on a path, at times, not much wider than a foot.

Another one of the high schools invited me to their weekly flag-raising ceremony. I got up soon after 5 am to be able get ready and bike there before 6:40 am. After the ceremony the principal asked me to say a few words before the entire student body. I asked how many students I was looking at - eleven hundred.

At one of the two schools in Tsévié, I went class to class to greet participating tenth grade students. When I asked how they liked their first lesson (which their teachers had given them earlier in the week) they whooped and hollered that it was EXCELLENTE! FANTASTIQUE! FORMIDABLE!

The second part of the project is at a local guild which unites various tradesmen and women - carpenters, electricians, photographers, tailors, hair dressers and blacksmiths, to name a few. Here, a group of five young adults who had already been trained in Life Skills at an annual Peace Corps summer camp, facilitated around 10 hours of training to a select group of tradesmen. Starting on January 11, these tradesmen will begin a rotation as teachers of a weekly class on Life Skills for their apprentices. At least 50 apprentices, if not more, should be present at any given weekly Life Skills session.

In Togo, youth who abandon their formal education can become apprentices and learn a trade. The education level of these apprentices, therefore, varies a lot. Some have almost completed high school, others never finished junior high or primary school. Since the French language level of many of these young people is very low, the lessons will be conducted in local language - Ewe.

I'll put up pictures of this stuff in my next post but for now let me say, again, THANK YOU.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

P.S. Did you check out our TV special with Sandre Lee? :) Life is unfair - I still haven't been able to watch it but why should I deny you a link? click here to laugh at the Sobiloffs

Facts & Figures on Girls' Ed

Out-of-school children

• There are 115 million children out of school – the majority of them, 62 million, are girls – and 77 million children not enrolled in school. The difference represents the millions of children who are enrolling in but not attending school.

• Children from the poorest household are three times less likely to be in school than their counterparts in the richest households.

Gender parity

• There are now 94 girls in primary school for every 100 boys, up from 92 in 1999.

• Of the 181 countries with 2004 data available, two thirds have achieved gender parity in primary education.

• The gender gap remains particularly large in Afghanistan (44 girls in school for every 100 boys), the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Pakistan and Yemen.

Illiteracy

• There are 781 million illiterate adults, two thirds of them women, worldwide.

Early childhood

• Children whose mothers have no education are more than twice as likely to be out of school as children whose mothers have some education

• In developing countries, 75 per cent of the children not in primary school have uneducated mothers

• One additional year of schooling for 1,000 women helps prevent two maternal deaths.

• Early childhood care and education establishes a solid foundation for learning and makes both girls and boys ready to attend school at the right age. It also improves parents’ and caregivers’ readiness to send their children to school by equipping them with deeper knowledge and skills.

• More girls can attend and complete school if other children they need to care for are receiving early childhood care and education; this is particularly crucial for children affected by HIV and AIDS.

HIV and AIDS

• If all children received a complete primary education, around 700,000 cases of HIV in young adults could be prevented each year.

• Women represent 62 per cent of the 15- to 24-year-olds living with HIV and AIDS globally

• The burden of AIDS care falls especially heavily on women, and can limit educational and economic opportunities for women and girls.

• Higher education levels for girls are associated with a reduced risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections.

• 15.2 million children under age 18 have lost one or both parents to AIDS; 12 million of these children live in sub- Saharan Africa.

Violence

• Girls between 13 and 18 years old constitute the largest group exploited in the commercial sex industry. It is estimated that around 500,000 girls below 18 are victims

of trafficking each year.

• Female genital mutilation/cutting affects 130 million girls and women globally and places 2 million at risk annually.

• In some cultures, the preference for boy children results in prenatal sex selection and infanticide of girls. In India, there are 933 Indian women for every 1,000 men,

reflecting 40 million ‘missing’ women.

Emergencies

• More than 80 per cent of the world’s 35 million refugees and displaced people are women and children.

• Emergencies put women at risk of extreme sexual violence and abuse. In Rwanda, 2,000 women, many of whom were survivors of rape, tested positive for HIV during the five years following the 1994 genocide.

In addition to its benefits for girls and women, education is a uniquely positive force with a wide-ranging impact on society and human development. Educated girls can better protect themselves against HIV, trafficking and abuse, and are more likely to grow up to have healthier families and send their children to school.

From United Nations Girls' Education Initiative