Grades are in for primary school teacher trainees this school year in Burkina Faso. All 17 primary school teacher trainees (three of which were in their second year of training and have now graduated and 14 who have just completed their first year of training) supported by you, our GlobalGiving partners, have passed their year-end exams. Such incredible and motivated young women! For those who have graduated, the next step is to pass the civil service test to be admitted into government service and then to be assigned to rural primary schools where the need is greatest.
The government of Burkina Faso works hard to offer a primary school education for all rural children. Reaching this goal will take time. The young women whose teacher training we are supporting not only adds to the cadre of teachers available to these village primary schools. It also encourages large villages with no primary school to build simple mud and thatch structures so that their children can qualify to have teachers.
Considering the success of the young women in teacher training, who began their educations as students in village primary schools, your scholarship support is paying off in multiple ways: providing an opportunity for qualified young women to achieve training in a field they feel passionate about, enabling them to become teachers and leaders in their communities, and contributing to the expansion of primary school education in the villages of northern Burkina Faso.
According to Association NEEED who has very effectively run girls’ education programs (from primary through secondary and more recently postsecondary) for the past 16 years for village girls in the region, the number of young women who qualify for postsecondary training is growing each year. Last year, over 200 qualified village girls requested scholarships for postsecondary training because their parents, who are poor farmers with subsistent incomes, could not at all help pay for their training, including living away from home.
Association NEEED is currently accepting applications for scholarships for the next school year and will soon need to determine the number of young qualified young women to whom they can offer scholarships in the coming school year. With your help, we hope to be able to offer 20 scholarships this year.
Our sincere appreciation for your support for these young women. It makes a huge difference: whether they will return to their villages to continue their family’s traditional farming or become teachers, role models and leaders for the next generation of rural children.
We welcome your questions, suggestions and ideas about this program.
Thank you!!
Good news: on #GivingTuesday 2014, we raised just shy of$19,000 which will fund 12 young women with 2-year scholarships next school year to train as primary school teachers. And in that competition, our project placed 9th out of 513 projects participating! Ninth place. $19,000! So an immense thank you for mobilizing your resources and networks to make that happen.
With the arrival of spring, we’ve just been alerted to another bonus day competition that this project can take part in as part of the Youth Spark campaign. The big day is tomorrow, Tuesday, April 14- and coincidentally a great day to think about putting some of those tax refunds to good use.
At 9am EDT (6am PDT) tomorrow, Tuesday, April 14, $100,000 in matching funds will be released. Donations will be matched 50% up to $1,000 per donor, per project. As usual, bonus prizes will be awarded to the projects with the most unique number of donors. So the more we spread the word and encourage other donors to give, the more our project stands to gain during the competition. An important reminder: in GlobalGiving competitions, matching funds always go very, very fast. Usually within the first 10 minutes!!!!!
So we’re asking you to make a special donation tomorrow, Tuesday (4/14), and we’re asking you to set your alarms to do so at 9am EDT (6am PDT) sharp!
Why do we ask you time and time again to join us in this endeavor? It’s easy. Every young woman who has received one of our scholarships has successfully completed her training (or is currently successfully engaged in her training) and all graduates have gone on to secure a teaching job upon graduation. Every single one! All of our graduates are now teaching in rural areas of Burkina, in the kinds of communities where-without the opportunities that donors like you have been providing them through the years-they might never have had a chance to go to school in the first place.
But they did, they did well, and now as teachers and as role models, they show other girls, their families and their communities what’s possible. Now that’s high impact investing!
The other reason we are so excited about tomorrow’s bonus day opportunity is that as much as we’ve been able to raise so far, funding 20 teacher training scholarships in 2014, there were 158 eager and qualified young women who were turned away from this opportunity, simply due to a lack of funds.
So we see tomorrow’s competition as a great chance to fund more women to get a post-secondary education in teaching. We hope you’ll agree and we hope you’ll join us!
We raised $19,000 last December. Can we raise $25,000 tomorrow?! I challenge you, I challenge the women we support-I challenge all of us to do our best for the future of Burkina Faso!
Please set your calendar reminders for tomorrow, Tuesday, April 14, 9 am EDT / 6am PDT and have your donations matched 50%. And ask a friend or two to join in this amazing opportunity.
On behalf of the Friends of Burkina Faso and NEEED, thank you in advance for your support!
Warmly,
Suzanne Plopper, Project Leader
A Double Benefit
Thanks to your generous support, these six young women (Haoua, Pascaline, Maimounata, Liliane, Hawa and Marietou) are in their first year of training at the National School for Primary School Teacher Training in Ouahigouya, Burkina Faso. These serious and spirited young women are committed to their future careers as primary school teachers. Upon completion of their two-year training, they will be assigned to village primary schools in their region, enabling the government to extend primary school education to additional villages: both an individual and a societal benefit of their educations.
As these young women successfully approach the end of their first semester of training, they talk of their strong desire to “share their knowledge with children and help them in their education”. As Hawa said, “Contributing to the education of young children is an immense joy for me”. Haoua added that she plans to work with village parents, many of whom are illiterate, to encourage them to send their daughters as well as their sons to school, saying she will help parents with school costs when necessary and possible. All of these future teachers have expressed great appreciation for the opportunity given them to achieve professional teacher training and have emphasized the importance of encouraging parents to enroll their children in primary school.
As young women supported by this project come from indigent farming families, their scholarships are the thread that enables them to gain access to teacher training. Your support of young women like Haoua, Pascaline, Maimounata, Liliane, Hawa and Marietou enables them to reach their dream of becoming primary school teachers and enables the government to expand educational opportunities to a growing number of village primary schools.
We are most grateful for your support for primary school teacher training scholarships for all 14 young women this year. Together, we hope to raise this number to 20 next school year. As always, we welcome your questions and comments about any aspect of this project. (You can contact me at smplopper@aol.com). And we invite you to share your knowledge and support for these young women with friends, family and colleagues.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
“No society can achieve its potential with half of its population marginalized and disempowered”. Melinda Gates (Gates Foundation).
Melinda Gates echoes the reason we provide scholarships to qualified young women in northern Burkina Faso for postsecondary education and training.
Edith and Mamounata are two of 14 outstanding young women in northern Burkina Faso who will not be held back in their desire to create better lives for themselves, their families, their community and their country. Thanks to the generosity of GlobalGiving donors, these two young women, profiled at the bottom of this email, are among this year’s recipients of scholarships and are enrolled in primary school teacher training. Both young women thank GlobalGiving donors for their scholarships and they promise to succeed in their studies and make you proud of their success.
At the Friends of Burkina Faso, we also thank you for your support of this year’s teacher trainees! And we ask you to consider supporting more young Burkinabe women’s career aspirations by participating in GlobalGiving’s bonus day tomorrow, December 2.
Bonus Day Details: Tomorrow, December 2, is #GivingTuesday on GlobalGiving. On this day, Microsoft will offer 100% matching funds on donations of up to $500 per donor to our project, Postsecondary Education for Girls in Burkina Faso, while funds last.There is $350,000 USD available to the organizations that best mobilize their donor communities.
Make a generous donation tomorrow and double your investment in girls’ education in northern Burkina Faso!
Competition among GlobalGiving eligible projects will be high for these generous matching funds. In past competitions, the matching funds have been claimed within the first 10 minutes after release. So timely action is required if we are to succeed!
Mark your calendar for tomorrow, December 2, and the timeframes below so that you can make your generous donation as soon as the clock strikes these hours!
Please note that only online donations (credit card or PayPal) are eligible for matching funds on GlobalGiving.org.
To donate on December 2, go to:
http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/post-secondary-education-for-girls-in-burkina-faso
In addition to the matching of your donations, there will be bonus prizes available for scholarships if we secure the most donors and/or are one of the top fundraisers for the day--so please be generous AND encourage your family and friends to do the same.
On behalf of this year’s scholarship recipients, thank you for your continued support!
The fundraising team at the Friends of Burkina Faso
A word about Edith and Mamounata:
Edith, from the small village of Boulma, has eight siblings and a daughter of her own. Her parents are subsistence farmers. Edith is excited about becoming a teacher because it will give her the opportunity to educate the men and women of tomorrow and thereby contribute to the development of her country. As a future teacher, she also looks forward to encouraging mothers to support their daughters’ education and emphasizes the importance of women being able to take care of their personal and family needs. Edith sees herself as a model student and a young woman capable of taking care of her family. Edith is committed to encouraging the education of all children so that they can become the leaders of tomorrow.
Mamounata, from the village of Seguenega, has a brother and a sister who are both subsistent farmers as is her mother. Her father is deceased. Mamounata is committed to the education of children wherever the government may place her. She hopes to encourage mothers to help out at school and to be advocates for the education of all children.
“We cannot succeed when half of us are held back.”
~Malala Yousafzai, 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner
Diemila and Rachidatau are two of 14 outstanding young women in northern Burkina Faso who will not be held back in their dreams and desires to create better lives for themselves, their families and their communities. Thanks to the generosity of GlobalGiving donors, these two young women, profiled below, are recipients of scholarships enabling them to enroll in primary school teacher training this year. Both young women sincerely thank past and current GlobalGiving donors for their scholarships. They are working hard to succeed in their studies.
At the Friends of Burkina Faso, we also thank you for your support of this year’s teacher trainees! And we ask you to consider supporting more young Burkinabe women’s career aspirations by participating in an upcoming GlobalGiving bonus day that’s just around the corner.
Bonus Day Details: December 2, 2014 is #GivingTuesday on GlobalGiving. On this day, Microsoft will offer 100% matching funds on donations of up to $500 per donor to our project, Postsecondary Education for Girls in Burkina Faso, while funds last.There is $350,000 USD available to the organizations that best mobilize their donor communities.
Will you make a generous donation on that day that in turn will double your investment in girls’ education in northern Burkina Faso?
As always, competition among GlobalGiving eligible projects will be high for these generous matching funds. In past competitions, the matching funds have been claimed within the first 10-20 minutes after release. So timely action is required during EACH release on December 2 if we are to succeed!
Therefore, we ask you to mark your calendars for December 2 and the timeframes below so that you can make your generous donation as soon as the clock strikes these hours!
Please note that only online donations (credit card or PayPal) are eligible for matching funds on GlobalGiving.org.
In addition to the direct matching of your donations, extra prize funds are available for girls’ scholarships if we secure the most unique number of donors and/or are one of the top fundraisers that day--so please be generous AND encourage your family and friends to do the same!
To donate on December 2, go to:
http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/post-secondary-education-for-girls-in-burkina-faso
On behalf of this year’s scholarship recipients, thank you for your continued support!
The fundraising team at the Friends of Burkina Faso
Meet Diemila and Rachidatau:
Diemila is one of 16 children in her family. Her father is deceased and her mother does her best to raise her family. Diemila wants to be a primary school teacher because she likes children and enjoys sharing her knowledge with them. Diemila is committed to helping her family who has very few resources. She hopes to always serve as an example to her peers and to contribute to her community by doing her very best as a teacher.
Rachidatau has two brothers and two sisters. One brother is a mechanic and the other siblings are students. Her father is deceased and her mother is raising the family. Rachidatau was very grateful to receive her scholarship to teacher training because she loves teaching children. As a teacher, she plans to encourage mothers to send their daughters to school so that they can take care of themselves and the needs of their families.
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