Secondary School & Safety for Mozambican Girls

Summary

This project brings 20 girls in rural Mozambique scholarships with after-school programs and social worker support to graduate the 8, 9, and 10 grades safe from sexual abuse rampant in schools. progress reportread updates from the field

How You Can Help  question mark

Make a donation
 

Received $7,146 from 65 donations from people like:

pfowlkes330
SheriNorris
Tad
(Anon.)

+


YOU!
Give now to become donor #66!

More Information About this Project

Project Needs and Beneficiaries

Less than 1 out of every 1000 rural girls graduates secondary school in Mozambique today. However, graduating 10th grade in Mozambique provides girls with substantial income generating oppportunities, including teaching and civil service, bringing long-term benefits to their families and children. It allows girls to escape poverty, ward off child marriage, decrease their chances of contracting HIV/AIDs and fight the culture of inequality that limits women and handicaps Mozambican society.

Activities

Addressing the complex reasons girls leave school, scholarships counter poverty, social workers provide support, protection against sexual abuse, and accountability, and afterschool programs give girls space to study away from pressures at home.

Funding Information

Total Funding Received to Date: $7,146
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $25,018
Total Funding Goal: $32,164

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).

Resources

Why this Project is Important

Potential Long Term Impact

The project will educate 20 girls: graduating the 10th grade qualifies girls for a range of professions, including teaching and civil service, allowing them and their families an escape from subsistence agriculture that reinforces cycles of poverty.

Project Message

Education is the only sustainable, long term solution to help rural Mozambican girls overcome the many obstacles they face.
- Macame B. Macame, Executive Director, Lurdes Mutola Foundation

Who is Running This Project

Contact

Gabriel Fossati-Bellani,
Director, Institutional Development
931 Julius Nyerere Avenue
1s Floor, Door nº 2
Maputo, Maputo CP 2441
Mozambique
258826270437
Email:

Project Sponsor

The Synergos Institute

Organization

Lurdes Mutola Foundation Logo Lurdes Mutola Foundation
Av. Julius Nyerere N.931
1st Floor, Door 2
Maputo, Maputo CP 2441
Mozambique
+258 21 487717
http://www.flmutola.org.mz

Learn more about Lurdes Mutola Foundation and the project team.

Lurdes Mutola Foundation's Current Projects on GlobalGiving

Not Just Soccer for Youth/Coaches in Mozambique
Not Just Soccer for Youth/Coaches in Mozambique

Where this Project is Located

Country

This project is located in Mozambique and can also be found under Children.

For more information about Mozambique, read the Human Development Report on Mozambique or the Wikipedia entry for Mozambique.

When this Project was Updated

Last Updated

This project was last updated on December 19, 2008.

Date Added to GlobalGiving

This project was added to the GlobalGiving project catalog on November 07, 2007.

Latest Update from the Field

First year of "More School for Me" completed

By Kevin Block - Education Programs Officer, December 19, 2008 04:07 PM

Year 1 of Mais Escola Para Mim (MEpM) is now complete and the Lurdes Mutola Foundation is proud to say that its dormitory immersion model for improving the academic performance of rural Mozambican girls works, pure and simple. Once acclimated to the new living conditions, our inaugural group of 18 scholarship recipients grew both as students and as young women. Not only did they all pass the 8th grade, but year-end grades demonstrated that they outperformed their peers at the Magude Secondary School on average in every discipline. They grew physically with a steady, healthy diet. They matured psychologically in a surrogate home that fosters sorority and self-confidence. After only a year of hard work, it’s not too much to say that they’ve started to set the groundwork of their personal dreams and, in some remarkable cases, bring entire villages into development.
And so LMF has decided to expand the program. Immediately after the girls went home for summer holidays at the end of October, the Foundation began constructing a new dormitory complex that will provide us with a facility that can comfortably house forty scholarship recipients and two live-in coordinators. All 18 girls that are now ready for 9th grade completed re-initiation applications alongside grateful and supportive parents and will be returning in 2009 to work with head social worker Marianna Mario Manhique. Joining them will be a new group of 20 8th graders from the most rural villages in Magude District in the Maputo province. On December 10th and 11th a team of LMF employees, accompanied by local school officials who could vouch for MEpM’s effectiveness, traveled the Mozambican back roads to Panjane, Mahele, Mapinlanguene, Manjane, Nwambyana, Motaze, and Marule in an attempt to reach out to those aspiring young women the greatest logistical and economic needs. In Mahele we recruited the first girl in the community’s history to pass 7th grade. In Mapinlanguene, we found a precocious 12 year old named Velosa with reading and writing abilities equal to children many years her senior. In Motaze, where several members of the 2008 class live, we entered a classroom full of interested families eager to have their daughters apply.
Of course, such promising success does not mean that there aren’t areas of MEpM in which the Foundation can improve. In Year 2 we hope to provide tutoring and additional materials that will further increase academic performance, especially in math and the sciences. The bigger group will also create greater logistical challenges, and we hope to find ways to make the dormitory complex less reliant on the LMF office in Maputo and more integrated into the Magude community. We would also like to include a fuller slate of special weekend activities.
It’s exciting to see this project and these girls grow. Please check back with our Global Giving page for future, more regular updates.

Links:


Attachments:

Read 2 more "Updates from the Field" | Comment on this update

Subscribe to "Updates from the Field" by E-Mail

How Else You Can Help

Spread the Word on your Profile, Blog, or Website

Put a widget for this project on your profile, blog or website to turn your friends into givers. Using our widget, it's quick and easy to add this widget to your profile or blog!