Just like everyone else around the world, Mali Rising staff and students have had to make a lot of “pivots” over the last year. Although that term may be over-used these days, it remains a central part of our new reality. Flexibility has become our new core skill, as closed schools and other problems challenge attempts to keep children learning. As part of our pivoting, we have developed and distributed take-home workbooks that allow our students to stay connected with learning and language during their extended break.
Helping Girls Leap From Primary to Middle School
One of the Girls’ Project goals is to have more girls graduate from middle school. To achieve that goal, we must first make sure that girls make the leap from 6th grade (primary school) to 7th grade (middle school). As part of our strategies to help girls make that leap, we have been talking to the families of the girls who were in the 6th grade and are now supposed to be enrolled in 7th grade in January 2021. These meetings are focused on trying to convince parents to keep girls in school, but also to see if there are any obstacles that would prevent girls from moving on to 7th grade. In December 2020, we talked with 18 families.
Each family had a different reason why they were considering removing their girls from school. One common issue is that families think that when a girl turns 15 she must be married. This belief makes it much more difficult to convince families to let their daughters continue in school, and perhaps into vocational training to get a job.
One Girl Leader Steps Into Her Power
As part of our Girls Project, after three years of work in a village, we train local Girl Leaders to take over leadership of the Project. This allows us to offer leadership training and real-world experience to some amazing young women and to make the Project more sustainable by making the leadership more local. Girl Leaders serve for one year, and we offer them three multi-day trainings throughout their year of service. In this blog post, Hindaty tells the story of one Girl Leader as she attended her second training with us.
Deadline Extended for Speech Up! Video Contest
Big news! Due to helpful input from our Youth Ambassadors, we are extending the submission deadline for our Speech Up! Video Contest to March 31, 2021 at midnight eastern. Our Ambassadors explained that this crazy year means many students are scrambling right now with college applications, and we do not want to add any stress to this year!
A Mali Teacher's Take on COVID & Learning
We Need Both Girls & Boys To Change the World
What do the students themselves think about their education and the education of girls in particular? For a long time Malian children had no idea of the importance of their education. Today with the advent of technology and more discussions about the subject, children are becoming aware of the importance of their education. However, gender equality in education is a subject that still needs more discussion in our villages. Not everyone is convinced that both boys and girls have the right to an education. As part of the Girls Project, I helped lead a debate among the boys from the school in Tamala around the topic of girls' education.
Safety First at Judge Memorial Middle School!
Mr. Touré is a Math teacher at Judge Memorial Middle School of Sankama. He is 34 years old and, according to him, married to a beautiful wife. Mr. Touré does not live with his wife in Sankama where he teaches because it is a small and remote village. He misses his wife incredibly while teaching in village. He gets to see his wife about every two months when he visits her in Bamako, the capital city of Mali, which is about 100 km from the village where he teaches. Mr. Touré has been very concerned about student health in his school since the outbreak of COVID-19. Because of his concern, he volunteered to coach the Mali Rising Health Club at Judge Memorial Middle
What Are You Doing Over Winter Break?
We Need a Few Good (Great!) Communicators
By Merritt Frey, Executive Director
Work hand-in-hand with our board to make a difference — be a Mali Rising Advisor!
Are you a skilled communicator? Maybe you have a background in advertising, or marketing, or public relations? Or maybe you’re an expert in recruiting volunteers and keeping them happy? Or you’ve got mean skills in setting up web-based outreach campaigns using social media, websites, and other online tools? If so, boy do we want to know you better!
Mali Rising has a small staff so volunteers are truly core to all of our work. Without volunteers, we would not be able to build schools, help teachers change lives inside those schools, or send kids off to higher education with scholarships.
Some of our most dedicated volunteers are our board members, but our board needs help! We are looking for two to three Mali Rising Advisors to help our board tackle our 2021 communication goals, without the Advisors having to sign on for the full workload of board service (although Advisors may decide they want to consider board service later!)
These Advisors will work with our External Affairs Committee board members to tackle our 2021 priorities. These include:
Dramatically expanding our Volunteer Project to engage more volunteers in ways that will inspire them but also provide real help for our schools from afar.
Helping to design and launch a new Adopt-A-School campaign that will raise much-needed funds for each participating school while allowing supporters to connect with the work and the students.
A review of our branding and communications style, with a goal of creating an updated style guide and exciting, updated look.
In addition, staff will be working on overhauling our annual gala (which may stay virtual) and expanding our electronic community of friends and supporters.
If you think you have skills that could help us with any of these goals, we’d love to get to know you! Advisors will be asked to participate in bi-monthly zoom calls with the committee, as well as spend several hours each month working in support of a project or projects. In total, we expect Advisors will spend 4 to 8 hours a month volunteering. All work can be done virtually, so you can be based anywhere in the U.S. Interested in learning more? Contact us!
Always Learning: Building Our Schools Better
All children have the right to an education, but some children around the world still do not receive an education due to the poverty of their parents and their countries. The Malian government is unable to correct this lack, leaving millions of children without access to an education. One of the reasons I love working for Mali Rising Foundation is that we are doing our part to make a difference on this enormous problem. Since 2004, we have worked to provide children with access to safe conditions for learning. Although we have a long record of accomplishment of good school construction, we are always learning and adapting. This year, we made some quite large changes to our own construction model.
