CAMFED

I was raised in a home with two loving parents and was told I had to go to school. But who in America isn't told when she is a child that she has to go to school? We've all (yes there are some exceptions) been through preschool, elementary, middle school and high school and some college. It's natural to us. It's part of our daily life. I've never known anything different........


But around the world in Africa, Asia and the Muslim communities, it is a privilege and usually not for girls. Families are poor, living on less than $2/day. Most families can only send one child if any and it is a boy because the idea is that boys will be able to use the education more than a girl would. Where does that leave the girls then? At home, illiterate, getting beat by their husbands. A poor woman doesn't know how to stand up for herself. She doesn't have the confidence or courage to say stop. Our culture in the U.S. is so different. It is hard for me to grasp why other cultures are this way. Why they think or act in certain ways. It is mind-boggling to me. 


Research has shown that some of the best aid is health and education. It is amazing what happens when a girl is given the opportunity to go to school and learn. Ann Cotton, a Welsh woman started the organization Campaign for Female Education or Camfed, now. When she visited a particularly poor part of Zimbabwe she learned that what prevented most girls from going to school was poverty. The families simply couldn't afford the fees and books and uniforms. 


From the CAMFED website: http://us.camfed.org/site/PageServer?pagename=what_index

In sub-Saharan Africa, 24 million girls can't afford to go to school. A girl may marry as young as 13 and has a one in 22 chance of dying in childbirth. One in six of her children will die before the age of five. Research shows if you educate a girl she’ll:

• Earn up to 25 percent more and reinvest 90 percent in her family.
• Be three times less likely to become HIV-positive.
• Have fewer, healthier children who are 40 percent more likely to live past the age of five.

Since 1993, Camfed has fought poverty and AIDS by educating girls and empowering young women. More than 1,451,600 children in impoverished areas of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana and Malawi have benefited from our innovative education programs.

We believe every child has the right to an education. Camfed uses a community-based, holistic approach to bring about change in Africa. The girls we support are selected by the community as being the most in need. We don’t just provide her with books or school fees. We help her throughout her development, from her elementary school years until adulthood. Our package allows her to get into school, do well academically, and maximize the value of her education after graduation.

I learned of this organization in the book I'm currently reading, Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Here's an excerpt from the book:

"Perhaps the greatest surprise is that Camfed alumni have themselves become philanthropists. Even though their incomes are tiny by Western standards, they still support other schoolgirls. Ann says that Camfed's high school graduates are each helping an average of five other girls at any one time, not counting their own family members, whom they also support. 

'They are becoming real role models in their communities', Ann says. 'It may be that the neighbor's child can't go to school because she doesn't have a skirt, so she'll provide that. Or maybe she'll pay another girl's school fees. This was something that we didn't expect at all. It shows the power of education'."

Please head over to the CAMFED website and check out the amazing things that are being done by determined and passionate women.