This project helps 3,750 orphans and vulnerable children stay in school through the mentoring and entrepreneurship of volunteer groups of mothers and grandmothers. These Mother Support Groups sell produce and other goods to provide needy children with food, clothing and school supplies so they can attend and succeed in school.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 24 million girls are too poor to go to school. Poverty not only excludes a girl from school but means she may marry as young as 13, has a one in 22 chance of dying in childbirth, and one in six of her children will die before the age of five. If you educate a girl she’ll: earn 25 percent more and reinvest 90 percent in her family, be three times less likely to contract HIV, and have healthier children who are 40 percent more likely to live past the age of five.
With grants, Mothers Groups can earn income by making soap, clothing, shoes, and pottery, or by growing vegetables and beekeeping. They then use this income to pay for school fees and supplies for orphans and other vulnerable children who cannot afford them. Most of these women weren’t able to finish school themselves because of poverty, and they are determined not to let history repeat itself. They are giving disadvantaged children in their communities the opportunity for a brighter future.
Approximately 150 Mother Support Groups will support 3,750 children through school, changing their lives and their families’ lives for generations.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
