By Amy Warnock | Development Manager
“There are seven kids in my family; I’m the youngest and the only one who goes to school.”
Takan is one of the students in RAIN’s mentor program who has overcome hardships and worked diligently to pursue an education. The mentor program helps children in Niger complete their schooling to create opportunities for financial security later in life. This includes motivating students to continue going to school even when they have limited access to education.
The Coronavirus pandemic has put even more stress on these students over the past two years. Though Covid was less disruptive to the academic year this year than last, schools still closed for just over 3 weeks as school buildings were used as sites for community food distribution. As a result, like last year, many schools across the country did not complete their curriculum and many students will be forced, yet again, to repeat a year of school. This cycle is extremely disruptive – each time a student needs to repeat a year, it reduces the likelihood that he or she will continue and complete his or her education. Fortunately, the Agadez Learning Center (ALC) and our mentoring program are structured to help reduce dropout rates and maximize the likelihood that our students complete their curriculum.
Preliminary data for the 2020-2021 school year retention rates suggests that 3.6% of students at partner middle schools dropped out (which is significantly lower than regional averages) and among mentored students, that rate dropped to 0.7%. And among the subsection of girls at the ALC and in RAIN homestays, it was 0%.
Further, we saw that RAIN students had greater academic success than their peers. In early July, students across the country sat for the end-of-middle-school (9th grade) BEPC exam. Students at our ALC had a pass rate 50% higher than the local average. Lower classmen, though they did not sit national exams, also had positive outcomes.
The feats that the ALC has accomplished this year could not have been achieved without your generous support. This exciting expansion project will double the number of students that the ALC will be able to house, therefore doubling the impact where help is needed most.
RAIN is continuing to raise funds for the ALC expansion. In an exciting update; we were recently gifted a $30,000 match that will give us a much-needed push towards our end goal of $125,000. Please consider donating towards this matched gift in order to make your dollar go twice as far!
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