Post secondary Education for Girls in Burkina Faso

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 9^th 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