Every June ninth graders all around Mali face their biggest academic challenge yet -- the national graduation exam, known as the DEF. Our students survived the exam this year and exceeded the national pass rate!
Partnering With Our Teachers To Improve Skills
Over the last several years, we've begun investing in our teachers. Why, you ask? Well, fundamentally teachers are what make a school a school...rather than a pole barn filled with screaming teenagers. A more nuanced answer though is that we had seen how little training and support were offered to our teachers, and how isolated they were in our small villages. One way we are supporting our teachers is through an annual 5-day professional training. But how do we know if that training is actually helping our teachers and hence our students?
Our Girls Rock! Evaluating the First Year of Our Girls Project
During the 16/17 school year, we launched our pilot Girls Project in three of our partner villages: Beneko, Simidji, and Kolimba. Our pilot goals are: to improve recruitment of girls to middle school, to retain more girls in school throughout middle school, and to make sure the girls see real results in terms of school success and life skills. We are delighted to share some great news from the Project's first year...
Five Things I Didn’t Know About Mali
Meet Just a Few of Our Great Students
The very best part of my job? Meeting our students. The second best? Receiving student interviews and photos from our hard-working Mali staff, Alou and Hindaty. Reading the students' stories always makes me feel good about our work, but also just plain better about the state of our world. You can feel good too! Take a little break, meet these three young Malians, and be cheered about our global prospects for the future...
School Snap 16/17: Eagle Environmental Academy
Checking In With Our Girls Before Summer
School is out for summer in Mali! While that means less homework for our students, in means more for staff here at Mali Rising. In particular: math homework. Why? Well, over the summer is when we do the majority of our evaluation for the year. We review all kinds of measures and metrics designed to better understand what's working in our schools and what isn't. From enrollment to test scores, we dig through it all. Currently, I'm working with a lot of wonderful information collected by our Girls Project Coordinator, Hindaty, to evaluate the first year of the Project. Because this is a new project, evaluation is particularly important...
Aminata's School Success Means a Better Future for Her Baby Boy
Utah Girl Scouts Supporting Mali's Girl Students
Back in April, I had the pleasure of meeting with a great Girl Scout troop here in Salt Lake City. We talked about girls' education in Mali -- the challenges and the benefits. The Scouts wrote letters of encouragement to girl students participating in Mali Rising's Girls Project in the tiny village of Kolimba. The basic goal? To simply let our girls know that as they struggled to get to school each day, someone far away was rooting for them. I think the photos I received from the letter delivery in Kolimba speak to how thoroughly the Girls Scouts achieved their goal! Check them out...
