Help 80 Secondary Pupils in Niger Read and Write

Seventeen Years of Commitment to Educating Girls in Niger

For the last seventeen years, our Association, les Amis de Hampaté Bâ, has made a simple but demanding choice to give disadvantaged girls in Niger, in Niamey, a real opportunity to build their future through education.

We select students, mostly girls, from particularly low-income families, often large families, whose prospects for success are initially very limited. In many of the families we support, five, six, or even seven children grow up together. The girls we select are often the only ones among their siblings to continue their education beyond primary school, and very often the only ones to pursue higher education.

Their family circumstances create an additional obstacle. Their parents are often themselves poorly educated or have received little or no formal education, and therefore cannot help their daughters understand their lessons, complete their homework, or make informed decisions about their education. That is why our work goes far beyond simply paying school fees. We seek to create the conditions that truly enable these young women to succeed.

Our goal is to support them from the beginning of middle school through the completion of a bachelor’s or master’s degree, so that they can acquire broad knowledge, develop critical thinking skills, and gain the professional skills they need to find employment, become financially independent, and pursue a career suited to their abilities and aspirations. For many of them, this independence also enables them to support their own families and relatives.

Supporting Girls in Every Dimension of Their Success

Because paying for an education is not enough when a girl’s home environment cannot provide the support she needs, we have gradually developed a comprehensive approach.

After school, the girls who have received scholarships from us meet in small groups under the guidance of a professional tutor. These tutors make sure the scholarship girls have understood what they learned that day and help them complete their homework. This regular academic support is particularly important for those who do not have a parent or relative at home who can help them with their schoolwork.

We also help them prepare for exams. We work to motivate them, build their confidence, and encourage them to persevere when they encounter difficulties. Then comes educational and career guidance: What course of study should they choose? Which field best matches their abilities? Which programs are most likely to give them a good chance of finding employment? We advise them by taking into account their abilities, aspirations, the opportunities available to them, and, of course, our own resources.

But our support does not stop with education

A girl who is hungry has a harder time concentrating and learning. That is why we provide a midday meal. A student who is sick or injured cannot fully pursue her education either, so when necessary, we pay for medical care from doctors, clinics, or hospitals.

Finally, when our students enter higher education, they need, like students anywhere in the world, appropriate tools for their studies. We therefore do our best to provide them with a computer suited to the requirements of their academic program.

In other words, a donation does not simply pay for schooling. It helps provide equal opportunities to underprivileged girl students: the conditions that are essential for a young woman to learn, succeed, and prepare for her future.

Seventeen Years Later, the Results Are There

After seventeen years of experience, we can now look back on what has been accomplished with confidence. Several of our former students have graduated and found employment. Some are married, have children, and have built professional lives that enable them to provide a decent standard of living for their own families.

But their success often goes even further: they are now able to help their parents and relatives, even though they themselves came from families that initially had very limited means to provide them with such opportunities.

We are therefore seeing the outcome we hoped for when we began: a young woman who would have had very little chance of pursuing higher education becomes a graduate, a professional, an independent woman capable of taking charge of her own future.

These successes are the clearest evidence that our approach works and has an impact.

Success That Goes Beyond a Degree

There is, however, another consequence of our work that we consider equally important.

Our former students understand what their education has given them to rise to new heights and succeed in spite of their families’ low income. They also understand how fortunate they were to encounter an organization that believed in them and gave them the means to continue their education, reach their potential and have equal opportunities. They know that, given their circumstances, their success would often have been highly unlikely without this support.

An Alumni Group with a sense of family is born

Out of this sense of gratitude, a community of former students has emerged: an alumni group that is increasingly becoming a true extended family.

This community supports itself. A young woman who has just graduated and is looking for her first job can benefit from the advice and contacts of those who are already working. A student completing her degree and looking for an internship can be connected with a former student or with someone in her professional network.

But this solidarity does not stop with those who are closest to them in age. Former students also take an interest in younger girls, including those still in middle school, high school, or the early stages of higher education. They offer advice, encouragement, and motivation.

Alumni students have become role models and their success is an inspiration to the younger ones 

For a girl still in middle school who doubts her own potential, seeing a former student who came from circumstances similar to hers, graduated, and is now established in a professional career can be extraordinarily powerful. She can think: “She made it. I can make it too.”

That is why we believe our work produces two essential forms of success.

The first is individual: enabling a young woman to truly benefit from the education she receives and to build an independent future.

The second is collective: enabling her to understand the value of the opportunity she has been given and to become, in turn, a source of support for those who come after her.

Receiving an opportunity, succeeding because of it, and then helping give that same opportunity to others: this is how a virtuous cycle is created.

An Effort Made Possible by Our Donors

None of this would have been possible without the financial support we have received over the years.

We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to all of our donors, and especially to those who have chosen to support our work through GlobalGiving. Thanks to their generosity, we have been able to accompany these young women throughout their education, meet their essential needs, and enable them to pursue studies that have profoundly changed their lives.

Today, after seventeen years, we know that this approach works. We know that the resources invested in these girls’ education produce concrete results. We also know that these results do not stop when a student earns her degree: they continue throughout her professional life, within her family, and now through the relationships she builds with younger generations.

We are working in a country where the needs remain enormous. We have chosen to focus our resources on those who are among the most vulnerable: girls who, without assistance, would often have very little chance of accessing higher education. And over the years, we have built a community of educated, independent, and committed young women who now serve as role models for those who follow them.

The system is now in place. It has proven itself. Our responsibility is to keep it going

That is why we need today the continued commitment of our donors and, whenever possible, their renewed support. Every contribution gives another young woman the opportunity to continue her education and build a future that, without this assistance, would be far more uncertain.

We also hope to welcome new donors who would like to join this effort. For them, as for those who already support us, this is about much more than funding an education. It is about giving a young woman a chance, changing the possibilities available to her, and then allowing her success to benefit others.

After seventeen years, we can see how far we have come. But there are still more young girls waiting for that opportunity.

With your support, we can continue giving them the means to succeed and build, generation after generation, a better future through education.