By Merritt Frey, Executive Director

Here at Mali Rising we often feature the students who benefit from our supporters’ generosity. Of course, many others benefit from a new school and the education it brings. So in this post we share some thoughts from a mother in the village where we are currently building our 23rd school, Kafara. Here are excerpts of what Sali had to say about the arrival of a new school for her children…

“My name is Sali Samaké, I have ten children but only eight are alive. I have three children who will attend the new middle school (two boys and one girl), two are in grade 9, one is in the 7th grade.

I think education is important for my children because they will teach me about the new hygiene practices they learn at school. I did not go to school, which I regret. We notice our girls who attend school are more helpful than those who have not had the chance to go to school. They are clean, they read our letters for us, they look for the phone numbers we need, they read us the directions of pharmaceutical drugs to explain the frequency of intake of our medications. An educated child is not easily lost even if we send them to a village where they have never been before because through the writings on the signs, they know where they are.

I hope that some of my children become doctors to monitor our health so that we have a long life. I want others to be men of law to tell us the right rules of conduct when we have problems with justice.

The construction of a middle school in Kafara brings happy agreement between us and our children and the whole village will be happy…”

That’s our donors — making whole villages happy, one school at a time!