Sometimes, a little role modeling can go a long way! That’s why as part of our Girls’ Project we bring successful career women to talk with our participants each year. This year, five powerful women inspired our girls with dreams of futures where they can make a difference.
Skits Use Humor to Broach Tough Topics
At the end of each school year, Mali Rising’s Girls’ Project organizes celebrations in each Project village. We call these celebrations Feasts and use them to bring the whole village together to learn about and celebrate girls’ education. One way that we convey awareness messages is through humorous skits. We focus these skits on sensitive subjects that girls face during their education.
Celebrating Girls' Education in the Villages
It’s a hard slog for a girl in Mali to get through the school year. That’s why at the end of each year the Girls’ Project celebrates girls’ achievements with our girls and their entire villages! These Feasts (as we call them) are fun, but also are a great way to engage parents and the whole community in a discussion about the importance of girls’ education. Read on…
Boys Speak Out for Girls
Girls’ education is a challenging subject everywhere in Mali. But it is especially problematic in rural areas, like those where our schools are located. Many parents in Mali do not think that a girl’s education is as valuable as a boy’s. Parents’ attitudes towards girls’ education are also passed down to their sons. As a step toward breaking that cycle, we host discussions with boys at our schools about girls’ education as a human right and as an issue that improves everyone’s future — boys, girls, families, and communities.
Independence, Sustainability, & Safe Schools
Are you a skilled DIYer? What if you had to do the repairs at your kid’s school….would your skills hold up for that DIY job? Maybe not, but if you had a little help maybe you could feel good about contributing back to the school. That’s what our school maintenance trainings do for parents on our partner schools’ School Management Committeees.
New Villages for a New Year of the Girls' project
Mali Rising’s Girls’ Project strives to get more girls into school and help them succeed and thrive once they are there. In the past six years, we’ve helped girls in eight different villages get into school and stay there. This summer, we are selecting five new villages for intensive work via the Project. We are excited to announce those new villages today.
Textbooks: Tools We Take for Granted
As one of my former professors —Pr Ibrahim Sagayar — said: “A teacher or a student without a textbook is like a soldier on the battlefield without a weapon”. Yet all too often in Mali, teachers and students are not armed with textbooks. I recently discussed this problem with two of our partner principals — the principal of Sue Chung Chiu Middle School of Simidji, Mr. Essai Mikoro and the principal of Little Heroes Academy I Middle School of Mana, Mlle. Djenebou Niama Coulibaly.
New Learning Kits Enliven the Classroom
Because basic tools such as textbooks, maps, educational diagrams, or science materials are missing from Mali classrooms, teachers are really limited in how they can prepare and deliver their lessons. But Mali Rising Foundation has long worked to provide textbooks to our classrooms, but this year we added additional tools provided in kits we loan out to schools for two weeks at a time. We provide two types of Learning Kits to our schools – a Language Kit and a Science Kit. The Language Kit provides resources for teaching both French and English, including books, flashcards, and more. The Science Kit is packed full of scientific drawings, tools for active learning like magnifying glasses and rulers, and other tools. We also provided written instruction sheets that give the teachers multiple ideas about how they can easily incorporate the Kit tools into their lessons.
Travelogue Day 4: Meeting the Mayor and Mana
Day four of our trip was a relatively short one, because we had to head north from the little town of Ouelessebougou back to the capitol, Bamako, to pick up a fellow traveler arriving at 2:30 pm. Still, we managed to get a lot done for Mali Rising with an early start and a lot of driving, from meeting the mayor, to visiting Mana, and more.
Why Principal Coulibaly Values Our Principal Peer Meetings
A school without a principal is less than a school! Our principals have a lot on their plates and Mali Rising wants to help them do the best job they can. One of our goals is to have great and frank partnership with our principals. As part of that, we host regular Principal Peer Meetings where we gather 5 to 6 Mali Rising principals to share their challenges and solutions with each other. At our most recent peer meeting in the town of Ouelessebougou, we got to talk with several our principals who participated in it. We already shared the experiences of Principal Cisse earlier this week. Now, let’s hear from Mali Rising’s only female principal, Djenebou Coulibaly…
