By Bess Palmisciano | Executive Director
In December of 2012, RAIN took on a student learning center and dormitory in the northern city of Agadez in Niger. The center is a place where nomadic students, especially girls, can find the opportunity to continue their education beyond primary school not available in the remote hamlets in which they live. We know that keeping girls in school is important to you, and would like to introduce you to the students at the center and share some of the programs we have planned for the next year.
Niger Program Director Brian Nowak and Halima Aboubacar, Specialist for the Promotion of Women and Children, spent extended time onsite this spring to gain a good sense of the students’ needs and interests. These children of the desert are away from home in a foreign place, a city of 30,000 people. They are used to the open air, to the stars and the winds. To learn here, they must feel comfortable and cared for. The Learning Center is a place where they live; where they eat, sleep, bathe and study. It is their home for two to three years.
While scholarship remains the primary goal of the program, we plan to include workshops focusing on leadership and roles in society. Nomadic rural populations in Niger are on the fringe of society, and we feel it's important to instill skills of engagement with which to represent themselves in their country. Another important goal is providing, in addition to academic tutoring, the same life guidance our mentors provide to girls in our mentoring programs. We hope to bring in new mentors, drawing upon the women in our Agadez leather artisan cooperative, to receive mentoring training and meet with the students each week. This year we will be expanding the budding recreational program to include instruction in leatherwork for Tuareg girls as well as the current embroidery activities provided for the Wodaabe students, to be provided by the mentors. The students plan on decorating their domitory with their crafts, and certain items will be brought to market in Agadez to generate spending money for them.
Last fall, Halima Aboubacar joined the RAIN team. A Tuareg woman, Halima co-taught along with Brian last year nutrition and hygiene to women gardeners and mentors in partner communities. Now relocating to Agadez, Halima will become a regular presence at the learning center, overseeing the mentoring and practical skills programs. Caring, yet an effective disciplinarian, the students know trust her; many of the girls call on her with questions and concerns.
We are thrilled that we are seeing mentored girls become the first girls in their communities ever to graduate primary school. For the upcoming school year, we plan to invite these girls to the learning center program as spaces become available so they may follow their success by going onto middle school.
The Niger school system is based on the French system, which starts with six years of primary school (1 - 6), followed by four years of middle school (7– 10), then three years of high school (11 –13). Beyond middle school, nomadic students must then go on to the capital of Niamey to attend high school. RAIN plans on creating a fund to support these students as they graduate from middle school and transition from the learning center.
Investing in a girl's future is investing in the world's future. Girls that stay in school delay marriage, have fewer children and earn higher incomes. The rural poor of Niger are marginalized, but with more educated citizens will be more empowered. As RAIN expands the center and is able to recruit increasing numbers of students, we expect to set a new precedent in Niger and inspire the government as well as other NGO's to open similar centers for nomadic children.
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