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Dakar Education Project

We currently sponsor about 20 girls who were not in school, or because of drastic economic conditions were at risk for quitting school.  These girls range in age from seven to twenty.  To do this, we work closely with school directors and their teachers and also talk with their families about the importance of girls’ education.    In its sponsorship WFG does not ignore boys, but rather focuses on girls.  Some of their stories are included in this section. 

Pictured above are three elementary school girls who attend the elementary school “Ecole Adja Mame Yacine Diagne" in the center of Dakar.   Khady, shown in the middle, has been sponsored for over two years, while the other two, Mame and Ndeye have been with WFG for more than a year and a half.  Mame and Khady share a similar fate; they both come to school from long distances with their blind grandmothers.  The two girls bring them to the city early each morning, set them up on a corner so they can beg and then go off to school. Although there are schools in each of their neighborhoods, begging is more profitable in the city center.  The grandmothers manage to make about 50 cents a day which makes the long ride worth it.  This is how they survive.  Ndeye, the other girl wearing the colorful pants is homeless and sleeps in Independence Place with her mother, Sally.  All girls finished the 2008 school year with success; Ndeye, however despite her unstable circumstances, finished second in her class. On the right, Sarah and Elena are with the girls.

The third picture shows Khady with her blind grandmother. Khady’s mom died when she was an infant and they live on the periphery of Dakar. They wake up early each morning and set of for a two hour ride in an over crowded mini van bus to arrive in the center in time for school.  They help each other as Khady can’t make the trip herself and her grandmother can’t see to make the trip; but the journey takes its toll on Khady as her teacher says she is often tired.  Women for Girls provides school text books for Khady, money for daily transportation, a snack for Khady during the school day and a bag of rice every other month for the family.

The next picture is Ndeye with her teacher and Angela who visited in April 2008.  Her teacher explained to us that the difficulty Ndeye sometimes has is due only to her lack of stability; she is extremely smart.  She lives under a tree with her mother, Sally, and gets to school every day before the other children so she can use the water to wash herself.  Unfortunately, Sally’s story is not that uncommon.  Her husband died, his family took the property to which she no longer had rights, and made them leave.  The scars on her face attest to the physical abuse she was put through by her deceased husband’s family as she tried to insist on living in the house.  There was nothing they could do except come to Dakar with hopes of finding work.  The Women for Girls coordinator in Dakar is actively looking for a room they can move into and WFG has two families in Genoa who will pay part of the first year’s rent.  With the stability and security the room will provide, Ndeye’s mother will be able to look for work and pay an increasing amount each year toward the rent.  With four walls and a roof over head, Women for Girls has no doubt that Ndeye can be first in her class.

These are two pictures of Bineta when she was eighteen. One was before beautician school and the other just four months after enrollment.  They are worth a thousand words!  She is now twenty, just finished her two years of beautician school with perfect attendance and one of the best in her class.  She is now ready to begin her six month apprenticeship after which she can work as a beautician. Women for Girls may provide the financial support, but the girls must be motivated to do their best and maximize their potential.  Bineta dreams one day to be the proprietor of her own beauty salon.  Her exuberant self confidence wasn’t always apparent.  When she was fourteen, she was already out of school because she failed the difficult exam at the end of elementary school that would have enabled her to pass to the next level.   If necessary, students can repeat the year and take the exam a second time. If they fail again, and their parents can’t afford private school, they have no hope of continuing.  This was Bineta’s case.  So, at fourteen she was already working endlessly with the other women in the household, but she held fast to her dreams.