By Alou Doumbia, Construction & Administrative Manager

At Mali Rising, we believe all children have the right to education. However, some children face barriers to exercising this right because of the poverty of their parents or because others because of lack of awareness of the importance of their education.

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. The questions posed were:

Does a girl have the right to education? If yes, why and if not, why?

Some boys in the discussion said that raising a girl is a waste of time, which is why parents are not motivated to enroll as many girls as boys in school. For example, according to an 8th grade student Monzon parents see that a girl will sooner or later be married to a man who will take her to his own home, so her parents do not see the benefit of her education to themselves. For other boys, the importance of a girl is limited to the housework she does with her mother: sweeping the yard, fetching water, preparing meals, fetching firewood, and helping her mother with the gathering.

On the other hand, according to young student N'Togon of the 7th grade, a girl has the right to education. He said this is true because the educated girl easily transmits her education to her children and benefits her husband too. With an education, a woman can help to apply good hygiene and nutrition practices, to be safe with the use of medications with her children, and more. When a girl is educated, it is as if her whole family is educated because she can change the mentality of her husband, her in-laws, and others for the betterment of the whole family. An educated girl can easily understand good hygiene and nutrition practices, and even the economical use of resources. N’Togon also said that he will make sure his future wife is an educated woman for all of these reasons.

After N’Togon articulated these points, the other boys started to reason in the same way. N’Togon led the boys in a new way of thinking about the question. After some discussion, we asked the 36 boys present to vote on the question of the importance of girls’ education. Only seven boys voted that girls’ education was not important, while 29 supported the importance of girls’ education.

We also discussed how boys should respect girls in the classroom. The boys replied that the presence of girls in class is necessary alongside them because their presence creates rivalry at work. On the other hand, some boys have insinuated that they should respect girls in class but that some girls like to provoke boys and vice versa. In conclusion, the boys appreciated the presence of the girls by their side and called on their classmate to respect them in order to create a climate of cooperation in the classroom.

This work with the young men of our schools is an important part of the Girls Project. Only by helping everyone in the community think more deeply about the value of girls’ education can we make real and lasting change for our girls and for our communities.