Girls in Africa

Thanks to the generous support of Global Giving donors, Friends of Burkina Faso has again been able to support 300 girls entering primary school this year through the Lambs For School Project. As of this year, we have supported approximately 1800 girls entering primary school in northern Burkina Faso. (See the 7/8/09 update for our Lambs For School Project strategy.)

The first group of girls supported by this project has finished middle school. Seventy-two percent of these girls passed the national exit exam, qualifying them to go on to secondary school (in contrast to 39% of middle school students in the region who passed this exam).

In anticipation of the girls’ success, NEEED (the local organization that runs the project) 1) expanded the middle school this year and made it a combined college/lycee (middle/secondary school), and 2) received funds to build three new secondary schools in the region which it has turned over to the government .... all of this for the purpose of accommodating the students finishing middle school and qualifying for secondary school.

NEEED is beginning to look for ways to support girls in post-secondary training (professional schools and the university).

Collectively, we have come a very long way! This is due to: 1) the commitment, imagination and hard work of NEEED, 2) the hard work of the individual students, 3) the enthusiastic engagement of their parents, and 4) the generous support of donors like you. What began ten years ago as a modest attempt to offer a primary education to a small number of rural village girls has evolved into ever-rising expectations about what these village girls can achieve when given an opportunity. There is the very real possibility that a high percentage of them will be able to complete professional training &/or university-level educations.

Our sincere thanks to you for your continued support for the education of these girls. Without our collective support, none of them could have even dreamed of school.

“Unless the girls are educated, society will not change”. Greg Mortenson (author of Three Cups of Tea)