By Merritt Frey, Executive Director
April's Alumni Month continues this week with a feature on Bouacar, a graduate of our very first school. Check out previous Alumni Month features on Mariam and Abdou.
Who’s ready to literally help build Mali? Bouacar Samake, a graduate of Mali Rising’s Trujillo Family Middle School in the small village of N’Tentou.
Bouacar had a rough start in life. His father died before Bouacar was even born, and his mother died when he was six. Luckily for Bouacar, his grandmother stepped in to raise him, and sent him to school at the Trujillo Family Middle School.
He graduated in 2012, and is now 24 years old. After leaving middle school, he went to the Professional and Modern Institute of Bougonuni where he studied building drawing (like our drafting). He received the Technician’s Certificate 2 with honors in 2016.
Not content to stop his education there, Bouacar tackled the entrance exam for the national engineering school. Although accepted to the school, despite working jobs on the side Bouacar found he could not pay the prestigious school’s annual fees. So he went on to the Poly-Technical Rural Institute. He is still in school there, pursuing his second year studying Hydro-Agricultural Development…an area of development Mali really needs help with! He hopes to graduate that program in spring 2018.
“My biggest dream is to work at the Ministry of Agriculture and – why not? – become an agricultural minister for the development of rural areas and especially for my village,” says Bouacar.
When not studying hard, Bouacar sounds like any U.S. college student -- he loves to play basketball and practice martial arts.
“I sincerely thank the donors of Mali Rising Foundation for thinking of us children of poor parents to give us the opportunity to be in school to continue our studies in areas which our country strongly needs,” says Boucar. “Thank you a thousand times.”
Want to help build a school to change lives like Bouacar's? Consider joining the Builders' Society or getting involved with our next school.
