DISCOVERY MOMENTS Women for Education: Education, governance, and the fight against poverty
Karine Guldemann called education the strongest weapon against poverty, the majority of whose victims are women. To illustrate the link between poverty and the lack of education she pointed out that of the world’s 80 million children who do not attend school, 60% are girls. Education as a tool to reverse poverty should be understood in the broadest sense, not just in traditional terms of reading, writing and arithmetic but also health, vocational, civic and legal education, she said. Myriam Carbonare’s NGO, ECIDEC, active in Benin, works to lift women out of poverty through training and micro-credit programs. These target young rural women who were forced to leave school very young to help with domestic chores, and lack the skills and resources to generate a livelihood. She told the audience the organisation sometimes met with unexpected reactions on the part of beneficiaries. Encouraged by initial success with women who received the organisation’s professional training and micro-loans, ECIDEC built a permanent vocational training centre for girls. To the NGO’s surprise, it had a very difficult time recruiting students. It then transpired that women who now had small businesses thanks to micro-credit were keeping their own daughters from attending the new school because they needed their help in the home. “They were reproducing the same old system they had been victims of,” Carbonare said. Carbonare added that one key to success in such a program was the notion of partnership, rather than a relationship of donor to receiver. Only a partnership model was sustainable in that it placed the different parties on a footing of equal responsibility. “There is an expression that says ‘the hand of the one who gives is always above the hand of the one receiving,’”she remarked, adding that she was delighted the first time the local program director had the courage and conviction to override her in a strategic decision. Carbonare also emphasised the importance of endurance, of taking time to get things right and to allow mentalities to change. “What’s built in a hurry is destroyed in a hurry,” she said. “Take the time it takes.” The results are there: today, the training center is full and completely operational, and some 2,000 people, almost all women, have developed projects with the help of ECIDEC’s micro-loans. Furthermore, the organisation is now 90 percent self-financing due to the very high reimbursement rate among borrowers. A little bit went a long way, Carbonare said, giving the example of a village woman who had started a tiny restaurant with a loan of just 50 euros and a bit of training. She was now economically self-sufficient, and as importantly, had recovered her dignity. The woman told Carbonare that now “she could cross the village for the first time in her life with her head held high.” Claire Calosci of French NGO Aide et Action recounted her own experience on the ground, particularly in Benin. Schooling, when available to girls, was steeped in cultural conservatism. When classes ended, the girls stayed behind to sweep the classroom while the boys went outside and played football, Calosci said, adding that even the textbooks reinforced such stereotypes. Calosci argued said it was girls’ perception of themselves that had to change, and that they needed role models. At the same time, her organization Aide et Action had undertaken efforts to work with boys in ways that help them regard girls as equals. Exercises included simulating a model government with girls and boys in equal power roles. Calosci had noticed that in the rare instances women were represented in bodies like parent-teacher associations or village committees, they were largely ignored. On the other hand, when united in economic groupings they were able to defend their rights and fight for the success of their projects. She observed that contrary to what her theoretical training had led her to expect, poor women resisted taking on roles in decision-making bodies because it was too alien to their image of themselves. “Women in some cultures view and value themselves as guarantors of tradition and of the home,” she said. “They don’t identify with women activists, even from similar backgrounds, who show up in their villages on motorcycles to exhort them to change.” ______________________________________________ |