Double Your Donation During Days of Giving!

By Merritt Frey, Executive Director

Our 3-day Gift of Education Days of Giving event starts today, and we need your help! This is our biggest fundraising effort of the year, and is critical for providing the support Mali Rising students need to make the most of this school year. Plus, gifts during Days of Giving are matched by the Johnson Family…which means each donation is TWICE as valuable! Can you help?

As part of the Mali Rising community, you are part of changing young people’s lives in Mali. Your gift of an education makes a difference for some great young people, and for a country facing both extreme poverty and on-going unrest.

With all of the uncertainty students face, going to school, curling up with a book, or playing soccer with our Girls’ Group teams are the little normalcies that allow kids to thrive in Mali. Those life-changing moments at school all come thanks to you and your generosity.

That’s why we are pulling together through the Days of Giving Gift of Education to raise $20,000 to provide the textbooks, teachers, girls’ support, and more students need to thrive during these tough times.

Your gift will mean twice as much during Days of Giving. The Johnson family has offered a generous challenge – if you give by November 6, they will match every dollar donated up to $10,000, DOUBLING the value of your donation. So if you give $10 for a textbook, that will really be two textbooks. And if you can give $100 to sponsor a girl to stay in school for a year, that’s actually two girls’ lives you will change for the better.

Please donate today to see your donation doubled! You can select from among a variety of great sponsorship items – from textbooks to girls' soccer to scholarships. Want to do more? Please help us reach our $20,000 goal by spreading the word to your friends or sharing our posts on social media.

PS Whether you can give or not, you are invited to a free, 30-minute online celebration on Sunday, November 13. Come get up close and personal with the students at one of our schools and learn more about the impact of your gift -- the event is free, rsvp is required.

Launching the Girls' Project in Sankama

by Hindaty Traore, Girls’ Project Manager

As we near the beginning of the new school year in Mali, I am busy meeting with leaders and parents in Mali Rising’s new Girls’ Project villages. Recently, I visited one of the five new villages – Sankama – to kick off our partnership with the girls of the village.

Mali Rising Foundation built Judge Memorial Middle School just a few years ago in Sankama. Before the construction of the classrooms, the students of the village walked 3 to 7 kilometers to get to the nearest middle schools. Because of this distance, many students dropped out of school, especially girls. Now, thanks to our generous donors, the students study in their home village and in complete safety.

Meeting with the School Management Committee — kind of like our school board idea — in Sankama’s Judge Memorial Middle School to discuss launching the Girls’ Project in the village.

In order to be able to start the activities of the Girls’ Project in Sankama, we met the members of the School Management Committee. This Committee is made up of leaders and the parents of pupils of the village. At our meeting, I  officially announced the arrival of the Girls’ Project in their villages and the activities we will carry out over the next three years. The village chief and the parents were all happy with what the Project will do for their daughters as girls’ education is one of the big challenges in the village.

Whenever I visit a village, the parents are very happy to receive the Girls’ Project support. This is even more true in the village of Sankama because they have just discovered a gold panning mine in Sankama town itself, which will lead many students to leave the school for mining.

The parents think the Girls’ Project could be a way to talk with the students about the consequence of dropping out of school for mine work or early marriage. They also hope this will allow girls and parents to know the importance of education for girls.

Now in Mali, many see the search for gold as the quickest way to become rich and afford everything one wants without having to go through the work of an education. Because the parents of Sankama students are very worried about the future of their children after the discovery of the gold mine, they are ready to support the Girls’ Project.

During the meeting in Sankama, a woman leader named Fatoumata Doumbia told her little story about the importance of a girl's education. When she got married in Sankama, every day her husband read a little book and smiled at the same time. She wondered what was funny in this book. She wanted to know what was in the book but unfortunately she could neither read nor write.

A few years later, an NGO brought a women's literacy project to Sankama. As soon as she heard that she rushed to register. After the first one-year training she already knew how to do the calculations and she had learned a lot orally but she still couldn't write. The first time she was able to write her name by herself was a great joy for her. Thanks to this training, she is consulted for everything that happens in Sankama and now manages to read the book that her husband was reading.

“I love your purpose of the Girls’ Project and would like to take the opportunity of your meetings with the girls to share this story with the girls so that they know that when you are educated you become important in the eyes of the community and the whole world,” Mrs. Doumbia said.

We look forward to working with the girls – and parents – of Sankama over the next three years to get more girls into school and help them thrive there!

How Two Moms Use the Mothers' Loan Fund

By Hindaty Traore, Girls’ Project Manager

This month, I checked in with a group of mothers who are using their entrepreneurial skills to make sure their daughters can attend middle school and build better lives for themselves.

The Cliff and Nita Bailey School in the little village of Beneko is one of the first schools where Mali Rising’s Girls’ Project was piloted. As part of the Project, the mothers of the village received a seed grant to set up what we call a Mothers’ Loan Fund. This Fund loans money to mothers for small businesses. The interest on those loans is pooled to fund school fees for the village girls in perpetuity.

Each village’s Mothers’ Loan Fund is run by the women of the village, and so sets up its own rules and systems. Given the large number of women in Beneko, the loans are distributed every 6 months. Each woman who receives a loan receives 5,000 FCFA. After six months each woman must bring 5000 FCFA plus interest -- which is 1000 FCFA.

Each woman uses her money differently to have her own benefit and interest after every six months. I wanted to share the stories of two women – Bintou Samake and Deniba Bagayoko.

Bintou shows of the fruit she imports using her Mothers' Loan Fund capital.

Deniba displays her wares on the back of her bike.

Bright, beautiful vegetables help make Deniba's business work.

The Beneko Mothers' Loan Fund meets under the schoolyard trees.

Bintou Samake’s loan

Bintou Samaké is the mother of 7 children, 5 of whom are currently in the middle school of Beneko. She was one of the beneficiaries of the first distribution from Beneko's Mothers’ Loan Fund.

When she received her loan, Bintou went by bike to get oranges from Famana, a village 10km from Beneko, to come back and sell them in Beneko. After selling her oranges she obtained 2500 FCFA as a profit. In six months, she was able to have a personal benefit of 30,000 FCFA. After six months, she returned the 5000 FCFA plus the interest of 1000 FCFA in the fund. “I sell oranges because a lot of people don't sell those here. That's why the profit is a bit high compared to other businesses in the village,” says Bintou.

Before the arrival of the project, Bintou found it difficult to pay the school fees of her five children. She saw her children expelled from school because of non-payment of school fees. She and her husband are farmers so they do not have enough resources. When the Girls’ Project Mothers’ Loan Fund came, the project paid for all the girls' school fees, which reduced her expenses. Bintou likes her side business, but she continues to farm and be a housewife.

Deniba Bagayoko’s loan

Deniba buys condiments such as tomatoes, onions, garlic, and concentrated tomatoes to sell in the village. The profit is not huge but it allows her to repay the money and interest from the Fund and still to have some extra money to set aside aside.

She also often buys cereals such as millet and maize when it is cheaper and keeps them until the price of these cereals is high, then she sells them. “The money that Mali Rising gave us helped me a lot, especially to pay the school fees for the girls because it is the women who pay the school fees for the girls but the women do not have the means to pay that. My daughter is married and her husband's parents do not want to pay her school fees. But thanks to the interest of the fund, she continues her studies,” exlplains Deniba.

Deniba Bagayoko’s last daughter in grade 9. Her daughter loves school but has failed the DEF graduation exam twice. Her daughter is married in another village 3 km from Beneko, and she has a 1-year-old child. Deniba says tat housework and the maintenance of the child prevent her from studying well.

However, Deniba takes care of her daughter’s child so that she can go to school. The daughter’s husband wants her to study but she is in the big family the household chores are enormous, so it is not at all easy. According to Deniba if there was no interest in the fund to pay her daughter's school fees, her studies would be finished because her in-laws refuse to pay. But because she utilized the Mothers’ Loan Fund through Mali Rising, they have not had difficulty paying school fees for the girls.

The women of Benkeo welcome the Mothers’ Loan Fund because it allows them to keep their daughters in school without fear of expulsion.  We love to see the Funds succeed because there are just so many benefits – more girls in school, mothers that feel empowered to protect their daughters, and even a little “extra” money for the family home.

Learn more about the Girls’ Project.