We help girls get a secondary education with sponsorships, hostels and support because we know that a secondary education is the greatest contributor to eliminating early marriages and early motherhood; to reducing poverty drastically, to improving health outcomes, including HIV/AIDS and to providing the skilled workforce that is so badly needed for Tanzania to make real progress.
Watch the film below from girleffect.org for an understanding of how the world could be changed, just by educating girls.
In Tanzania, only 6% of children went into secondary education in 2005, the Government has pledged to increase this to 50% by 2010. Without local, targetted help the main beneficiaries will be boys. Although Tanzania is one of the few countries in Sub-Sahara Africa to have achieved near gender equity in primary schools, only a small percentage of girls make it to the end of secondary education. The reasons are many and linked to socio-economic issues, such as poverty, the need to care for other family members, the traditional role of women within the household and increasingly, safety.
But sponsorship can help enormously and it can cost as little as 50p a day to change a girl’s life.
girls students coming from far away villages
In Ilongero, there are over 200 girls that would benefit from getting support grants. Without help, most of these girls won’t make it to the end, either because of costs, lack of performance due to tiredness or sexual harassment.
To educate a girl is to educate a family, a whole community. When she becomes a teacher, doctor, lawyer, etc. she is much more likely to use her skills to benefit her country. Most men can’t wait to escape abroad. Did you know that there are more doctors from Malawi in Manchester than the whole of Malawi?
Being born a girl in Tanzania as in many other developing countries can be a real curse. You will be made to care for your siblings almost as soon as you can walk; there won’t be time for studying, let alone playing as water and wood will have to be found and help will be required with cooking, washing (both obviously take hours to do) and tending to the smaller animals, such as chickens. Brothers do tend to look after anything bigger than a baby goat, but not much else. Watch the short story of Kakenya for a revealing insight and proof that education liberates girls
looking after her brothe
At puberty, when most girls in the rich world celebrate their passage into womanhood and the start of more freedom, our Tanzanian sister start to dread the possibilities of an early marriage or an unwanted pregnancy or even just the hard life that seem to beset every woman in their community. Her first period is no cause for joy as she struggles to cope without access to affordable and appropriate protection. The following article on this issue is revealing, but also offers a glimpse of hope; it was written by an African educated boy!
