“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.
Thanks to your very generous support over the past year,14 young village women in northern Burkina Faso are receiving scholarships this academic year for training as primary school teachers. This is more than twice the number of scholarships we were able to offer last year in partnership with GlobalGiving donors!
What does this mean for the individual scholarship recipients and for primary education in Burkina Faso? For the young women who receive the scholarships, it is an opportunity they would otherwise never have had to receive professional training qualifying them to become primary school teachers. For rural communities in particular in Burkina Faso, it enables the government to assign teachers to villages that have built simple classrooms out of local materials in hopes of giving at least some of their children the chance to go to school. Every additional trained teacher allows for extending primary education to additional villages. And most of our scholarship recipients are assigned to such village primary schools upon completion of their training.
In a recent address to the U.N. on gender issues, Emma Watson (of Harry Potter film fame) stated that, at current rates, it will take until 2086 for all rural African women to achieve a secondary education. We are proud to be part of a very successful program aimed at accelerating educational opportunities for girls and young women in Burkina Faso.
Photos of, and information about, the young women receiving this year's GlobalGiving/Friends of Burkina Faso scholarships will be forthcoming soon. Association NEEED (who runs the program in northern Burkina Faso) is currently making the final selection of candidates and organizing the logistics of getting scholarship recipients enrolled and settled into their respective training programs. We will post photos and information about the young women that you, our GG partners, have so generously supported as soon as they become available.
We are very proud of the outstanding progress of this project over the past five years and what it has meant to young women in Burkina Faso who have benefitted from our scholarships. Beginning in 2010 when Friends of Burkina Faso offered 13 scholarships (the total for the program that year), our continued generous support of girls’ postsecondary education in Burkina has been a major driving force in helping the project to attract additional donors worldwide to support the education of more village girls each year. In addition to the 14 girls receiving GlobalGiving/Friends of Burkina Faso scholarships this year, Friends of Burkina Faso is supporting scholarships for six additional young women to receive primary school teacher training, six young women to pursue university studies, and three young women to pursue midwifery training. Of the 54 students to whom we have provided scholarships to date, 28 have completed their training and are working (as primary school teachers, nurses and midwives), 22 are entering their next year of training and four are awaiting results of year-end exams.
We are most appreciative of the generous donations of our GlobalGiving partners since we teamed up with GlobalGiving in 2013 in support of this project. We welcome your continued support.
Thank you!
We have just received year-end grades for the three young village women to whom we provided postsecondary scholarships for primary school teacher training this past year, thanks to generous GlobalGiving donors. All three students passed their first year of training with high marks. In the words of one student, Zong-Naba Ramata, “My sincere thank you for giving us this opportunity to become teachers, to understand child development and behavior, and to prepare ourselves to educate young children”. (We are awaiting grades for the two nursing students and one midwifery student who also received scholarships thanks to generous GlobalGiving donors.)
Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 25, Microsoft is offering donors to this project (and other youth projects) 100% matching funds – until the $200,000 in matching funds run out. This is a rare opportunity for you to double the effect of your donation and to provide the opportunity for additional young village women to become teachers and contribute to the education of the next generation of children in Burkina Faso.
Mark your calendars: Wednesday, June 25 only: your donation will be matched at 100%!
To make your donation, go to: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/post-secondary-education-for-girls-in-burkina-faso/
On behalf of the six young women whose scholarships were supported by GlobalGiving donors this year, I want to thank you for your generous support.
Links:
Calling all past, current and future partners of girls’ education in Burkina Faso. Thanks to Microsoft, today, April 16, beginning at 12 noon EST, 9am PST, is a big bonus day on GlobalGiving. There are two different options to help grow your donation:
If you were thinking about donating, this is the perfect time. Just click on the project link below to get to the project page and then click on orange DONATE. Choose the recurring donation choice below orange button.
www.globalgiving.org/projects/post-secondary-education-for-girls-in-burkina-faso
Attached are photos of some of the girls that you helped to send to postsecondary training this year. We posted a message from Salimata in March. We will post messages from each of the other girls over the next few months
If you have any questions about this project or how the girls are benefitting from your support, please don’t hesitate to email me directly at smplopper@aol.com. I am happy to answer any questions you might have.
THANK YOU for your on-going support for the education of these girls.
Salimata is one of six young village women in northern Burkina Faso who is benefitting from a post secondary training scholarship this year thanks to generous GlobalGiving donors. Salimata is 22 years old and is from the village of Duekoue. She is in her first year of primary school teacher training. Salimata and her family were ecstatic when they learned that she had received a GlobalGiving donor-sponsored scholarship allowing her to pursue teacher training. Because her family members are indigent farmers (her father has passed away), prior to receiving her scholarship, Salimata was following the only avenue open to her: staying in a nearby town, taking a night course and trying to find work in town.
Salimata says that the most interesting aspect of her teacher training is being with young children and trying to understand them better in the context of their developmental stages and corresponding ability to learn. And the most difficult aspect of her training: the hard work required to succeed at each step of her training. She added that by being in this training, she has learned to be responsible for herself and to earn respect in life. Salimata sincerely thanks GlobalGiving donors for her scholarship.
We will continue to share with you stories of other young women whom you have enabled to pursue their dreams of a post secondary education. We are proud of all 54 young women whose post secondary educations we have supported through scholarships. 100% of them have either graduated or are currently pursuing their educations.
Mark your calendars for an upcoming opportunity: this project is a Microsoft YouthSpark project on GlobalGiving. All online donations to YouthSpark projects on GlobalGiving will be matched at 50% by Microsoft on April 16th. There will be $100,000 in matching funds (so donate early). There will be a bonus prize of $10,000 for the project with the most unique donors!
Our sincere thanks for your continued support!
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