Lambs Support Village Girls' Education

The village of Riqui is an example of the success of Assn NEEED’s Lambs Support Girls’ Education Project in northern Burkina Faso.  In the school year 2014-2015, NEEED responded to Riqui’s request to participate in this project by supporting the entry into primary school of 43 girls – each with a lamb and school materials - for the first year of school.

Of the 43 girls who entered primary school in Riqui, thanks to Assn NEEED and to our collective support, 40 are in their fifth year of primary school.  (Three left Riqui’s primary school two years ago as their families moved to Ivory Coast in search of employment.)  NEEED staff met recently with students, parents and teachers in Riqui.  The students shared that selling their lambs (and buying new younger ones) each year has enabled them to buy school materials and clothes to enable them to stay in school, and to contribute occasionally, when necessary, to their family’s food needs.  An added bonus: because sheep often have twins, and occasionally triplets, girls who were lucky enough to be given a “first” female lamb who was pregnant at the time now have 2-6 lambs.  These young girls are learning the value of building their “asset”, knowledge which will continue to serve them as they grow up.  

Academically, over the past 14 years, 84% of the village girls enrolled in primary school through the Lambs Support Girls’ Education Projecthave passed the national exit exam at the end of primary school, qualifying them to continue on to middle school, compared with 64% of their peers throughout the northern region.  And it keeps getting better. 2016: 86.3% passed; 2017: 87.1% passed.  In 2018 89.6% received their Certificat d’Etudes Primaires, (compared with 58.8% of students in the province, 56.1% of students in the region and 61.6% of students nationally).

NEEED sincerely thanks GlobalGiving donors for your support without which the education of village girls in northern Burkina Faso, and the increasingly positive cultural climate for girls’ education in this region, would not be possible.

Young village girls have inspiring stories about having the opportunity to go to school.  It’s also important to hear from the adults in their world, especially their leaders and their parents, about how they view girls’ education.  These adults are the focus of this report.

Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, in a keynote address at the European Development Days, June 5-6, 2018, declared that “Education is the only way to fight against early marriage.  Education remains an essential vector for transforming the lives of young girls in all sectors of a nation’s life. Even more, it is an effective weapon against all practices that belong to another era. The world cannot afford to leave half of its human potential unused as it seeks to meet the sustainable development goals (SDGs).”   President Kabore’s open and candid declarations about the importance of girls’ education speak to very positive cultural changes in Burkina and to the growing commitment of government to promote girls’ education.

Ouedraogo Madi, President of the Village Development Committee and Chief of the village Bourbo. “Our sincere thank you to Association NEEED and its partner, Friends of Burkina Faso, for we know that behind all the work done by NEEED to encourage each village to send their young girls to school, there are NEEED’s partners who sacrifice in order to enable the education of our children.  NEEED’s support of school materials, lamps, uniforms and a lamb for our young girls has in fact propelled the education of all children in our village. As proof, we had to build a second school of mud walls and thatched roof.   We are very grateful to NEEED for helping us recently to replace this school by more permanent classrooms. 

Ouedraogo Zoenabo, Parent and President of PTA. “I speak for all women in Bourbo because there is not a single person here who does not have a family member who has benefitted from the Lambs Support Girls’ Education Project.  Before this project, parents were only able to send one out of four children to school.  The others stayed home.  In view of the school materials given our daughters entering primary school, and our ability to continue to provide them each year – thanks to the lambs our daughters receive the first year - even our daughters who are too young to go to school beg their parents to enroll them in school.  Before this project came to our village, many girls dropped out of primary school.  Now most of them go on to secondary school.  Our profound gratitude to Association NEEED and Friends of Burkina Faso for propelling the education of our daughters.”