Mentoring for At-Risk Nomadic Girls in Rural Niger

Over 300 Nigerien girls are being mentored this year and this mentorship is paying off! While enrollment across Niger is still quite low, enrollment is growing in our partner schools. Last year, girls represented just 41% of students at the Aouderas Middle School. Now, girls make up 51% of the student body. With the support of local mentors, more and more girls are enrolling and they're succeeding! 

Last year, the Aouderas Middle School had a 78% success rate on the National Exam. That's 3x higher than the success rate in the regional capital. One of the mentored girls earned the highest grades in the entire department. There's nothing better to show girls they can succeed than seeing the successes of their friends and neighbors. 

RAIN Mentor Tanalher talks about a young girl from her community who dropped out of school for 2 years. She had started middle school but abandoned it because she didn't have the support she needed to succeed. She returned home, feeling hopeless and without direction. Through the encouragement of the local mentors, she resumed her studies, completed middle school, and this year began high school! This is a significant achievement in a community where so few people complete elementary school. 

She says "I am emotional and can’t find the words to describe my feelings, I know that thanks to your initiative, my life has changed for the better. I was living without an objective, without a vision for the future, but now I’m fulfilled, full of vision and clarity. I am confident in the future."

GlobalGiving donors like you have made this possible for young girls throughout Niger. You are creating opportunity through education. Thank you for your generosity and for ensuring girls receive the support they need to thrive. 

Links:

• RAIN Website
• Follow RAIN on Facebook

As the new decade approaches, we are proud to share the following programmatic successes and achievements from the last year:

• 377 girls were mentored through our Mentorship Program.
• Female mentees were 15% less likely to drop out of school compared to unmentored peers.
• 100% of girls in our pilot middle school program passed their year-end national exams on the first round and advanced to the next grade. School enrollment is now up 24%.
• 18 girls received room and board through the Agadez Learning Center, enabling them to attend middle school.
• 8 girls received room and board in our partner communities in Aouderas, enabling them to attend the Aouderas middle school.

Our Mentorship Program successfully provided mentoring to 564 elementary and middle school students, 67% of whom are girls. With the right support, mentorship, and coaching, our female mentees developed the confidence to value their own education and focused on developing new life skills, building competencies, and outperforming their own expectations. Our local, trained female mentors worked with students and their families to ensure students not only attended school regularly, but also thrived and outperformed their peers. As a result, our female mentees were 15% less likely to drop out of school. This year, we also expanded our existing elementary mentorship program in Tagantassou where the school director noted the positive impact of our program on attendance, which ultimately influences students’ ability to continue their education and enroll in middle school.

In addition to serving as their mentee’s advocate, our mentors provided students with traditional and cultural skill-building practices such as weaving, health education such as WASH techniques and reproductive health, and education on issues of gender-based violence. As a result, our education programming successfully provided critical wraparound support that ensured girls’ continued education, well-being, and long-term success.

RAIN recently piloted a Middle School Expansion Program in response to the Nigerien government’s opening of new middle schools in rural communities. Despite increasing access to middle schools, many of these schools remain largely under-resourced, lacking proper facilities and teacher resources. Our Mentorship Program works to support these under resourced schools and provide students with mentorship and supplemental classes to support their educational advancement. Mentors also serve as a bridge and trusted partner to families, many of whom were reluctant to send their girls to middle schools, especially schools that required long travel to attend. Our pilot saw enormous success in its first year – 100% of students at our pilot middle school program passed their year-end national exams on the first round. This is rare in Niger as most students are obliged to sit a second-round oral exam due to low test scores. Further, our pilot also saw that middle school enrollment increased by 24% this year. With the success of this pilot, we expanded to two new middle schools in the Tillabery region and are currently working with 120 middle school students.

Looking Forward:

2020 will be an exciting year for RAIN as we expand our educational initiatives for girls. With new middle schools and, correspondingly, expanded elementary school populations, we see a unique opportunity to grow our mentoring program. There is a growing demand in our partner communities and their neighboring villages as more families start to see the positive impacts of our programs. For example, in a small village near Ingui, the community has explicitly requested more mentors. While there are already some students enrolled from that area, families are concerned about the long distances their students travel to get to school and believe that mentors’ support and consistent encouragement would help combat this issue. As such, we plan to expand to more than double the mentoring program in this area in the next academic year.

Our educational goals for 2020 are to:

1. Train 137 female mentors (including 25 new mentors) who will mentor a total of 685 youth across elementary and middle schools, 70% of whom will be female students;

2. Provide scholarships for room, board and tuition at the Agadez Learning Center for 40 youth (18 new students from villages that don’t have a local middle school), over 50% of whom will be female students; and

3. Help 75 female students to successfully enroll in or advance to the next grade in middle school. Your support allows us to achieve these milestones.