Educate girls and fight poverty in Senegal

October 11th marked the 10th annual International Day of the Girl, a day to recognize girls' rights and the unique challenges that girls face around the world.

To celebrate, we hosted several community mobilization meetings across the Fatick region of Senegal, where adolescent girls and their parents were invited to speak up and share how their education has transformed their lives, and to advocate for the issues that matter to them, such as eradicating gender-based violence.  

Thank you for supporting Women’s Global Education Project in rural Senegal, and for advocating for global, gender equality. To learn more about how our programs support women and girls, watch this special video!

Women’s Global Education Project’s Our Sisters Lead leadership and development program encourages high school students in Fatick, Senegal, to become role models for younger generations, and promote gender equality in their communities!  Our Sisters Lead participants attend workshops on the leadership skills that most interest them, including conflict resolution, public speaking, advocacy, and women’s rights. Awa, a high school leader in the program, shared, “Thanks to this program, today, I know my rights because I did training on communication on the priority issues of rights.” Awa dreams of becoming a lawyer, so she can eradicate violence against women and girls. 

Not only does this program promote women in leadership roles, but it also teaches boys how to support girls in their fight for gender equality! Yaya, a male participant in the program, commented, “I want to speak up alongside my sisters to give them courage to help them accomplish their tasks.” He went on to discuss the importance of taking on domestic tasks and supporting girls on their educational journey. Our Sisters Lead is vital because in the rural communities where WGEP work, boys often remain in school while girls are forced to drop out to help with household chores, or move to cities like Dakar to become domestic workers. This phenomenon leads to a lack of women in positions of power and authority in local communities.

Each year, Our Sisters Lead serves 300 girls and 60 boys, helping them to gain critical leadership skills, and empowering them to design community service projects! Khadidiatou, another high school leader, stated, “This program helped me a lot to strengthen my commitment, determination, and conviction to achieve my dream in the future through the training we received on public speaking, girls and women's rights issues and leadership.” Khadidatou is already making change in her community, and helped to organize a community march on International Women’s Day to spread the word to end gender-based violence! 

To learn more about Our Sisters Lead, check out our recent video with interviews from Awa, Yaya, Khadidiatou, and their classmates:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC34cqE1I0Y&feature=youtu.be! 

March is Women's History Month, and we're proud to highlight Ami, one of 900+ adolescent girls in our Sisters to School scholarship program. Ami shares in her own words how the Sisters to School program has supported her through and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic:

"I am a student in my final year of middle school in Toubacouta. I live with my mom and my 3 little sisters. My mum was abandoned by my father and then he filed for divorce. So, she lives alone with her children. My mother does not have a formal job, she sells breakfast every morning in the neighborhood in order to earn some money to feed us and support me and my sisters. She gets up every day at 5 a.m. to prepare food to sell to customers in the neighborhood for breakfast. Sometimes she works as a domestic helper doing the laundry for other people to earn some money as well.

Education is important to me because it is the only way today to succeed in life, to fight injustice, inequality, and poverty! Thanks to Women's Global I had the will and the courage to continue my studies, because at one point I almost stopped school to help my mother overcome the difficulties she was facing because of the treatment she faced from my father. But it is thanks to WGEP that I had the strength to change my mind and continue my studies through support for registration fees, school supplies, toiletries, tutoring classes, food aid during the difficult times of the COVID period and especially the important advice and recommendations that I receive.

My dream for the future is to pursue studies and succeed to obtain the diplomas and qualifications required to have a good job in order to better support my mother, my sisters and get them out of poverty. I want to be a lawyer to help all the children who are abandoned by their fathers in my village and everywhere in Senegal.”

Please make a gift this month to ensure that more girls like Ami can attend and succeed in school! Thank you for your support and advocacy for girls' education and gender equity.

Last month, Women’s Global Education Project Senegal hosted a special community celebration in honor of the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl Child, a day to recognize girls’ rights and the unique challenges girls face around the world. 

We celebrated the hundreds of adolescent girls in our program who maintained a 100% retention rate in school this year! This accomplishment would not have been possible without the involvement of the many parents, community leaders, and mentors who supported girls through the challenges of the ongoing pandemic, in addition to WGEP’s scholarship program, which covers the costs of school and exam fees, uniforms, food, school supplies, transportation and safe lodging for all scholars.

Please enjoy this video of community members dancing at this special event, and thank you for believing in the power of girls’ education!