By Adama Kone, Teacher Project Manager

Principals in Mali have a hard job and they are often literally hours away from any peers. These principals face struggles with students, parents, and bureaucracy and can often feel quite alone. The principals at the 28 Mali Rising partner schools are no exception.

That’s why a few years ago we established the Principals’ WhatsApp group. This group uses a tool nearly everyone in Mali uses, WhatsApp, to allow our principals to know each other and share useful information and experiences. The same network has allowed our principals learn some new teaching strategies since most of them teach as well as serving as principals.

Through out the 23-24 school year our principals were able to participate on WhatsApp group by sharing the information about their own schools like numbers of enrolled students textbooks, their students’ scholarship nominations, our questions about school committee management.

One of the most active principals on the WhatsApp group was Lassine Sanogo from Entreprenuers’ Organization Academy. Mr. Sanogo is very devoted to helping his peers through WhatsApp by asking and responding questions. I recently talked with Mr. Sanogo about his motivation to help his peers on the Principals’ WhatsApp group. Here is what Mr. Sanogo shared with me:

“I am Mr Sanogo from Entrepenuers ’ Organization Academy and I have been the school principal here for about three years. I used to work in a very remote area — far west of Bamako — where I did not have a chance to be in groups like this in order to exchange ideas with my peers.

During this school year, I was able to share my opinions on many things on our Principals’ WhatsApp group, like how to improve some teaching skills in order to have good school results. I also shared some documents on the WhatsApp group that could help my peers understand some school regulations. I liked Mali Rising Foundation’s idea of creating this platform, which I think can really strengthen our connections and help us improve our teaching skills. I am mentioning teaching skills because I also teach French at my school, which I enjoy very much !

I also think that our WhatsApp group is one of the best ways for us to stay in touch with Mali Rising Foundation in terms of sharing information in time. During this school year, I always read information from Mali Rising Foundation and tried to reply them in time to things like nominating students for scholarships, or sharing student enrollment data. This is one of the ways the principal group was most useful, because it always helped us quickly  share our documents as needed.

I learned from some of my peers on the WhatsApp group how to work properly with my school committee management in terms of hosting meetings with my school committee and sharing school results with parents. One of my best peers as principal is Mr. Coulibaly because he is great for exchanging these types of ideas. He is my great friend and is always open to discuss things with me. Sometimes I call him on the phone and ask or answer questions related to our teaching job. But sometimes we talk about personal things like family situations. I love him very much, although he rarely reacts in our group. I am very thrilled to be on this principal group!