by Adama Kone, Teacher Project Coordinator

A school without a principal is less than a school! Our principals have a lot on their plates and Mali Rising wants to help them do the best job they can. One of our goals is to have great and frank partnership with our principals. As part of that, we host regular Principal Peer Meetings where we gather 5 to 6 Mali Rising principals to share their challenges and solutions with each other. At our most recent peer meeting in the town of Ouelessebougou, we got to talk with one our principals who participated in it. Let’s read more about what he said:

My name is Abdoul Aiz Cissé, the principal in the middle school of Tentoubougou. Let me tell you that I just came in fresh as principal here. I am really happy to be appointed and hope I will make things go for better as we move forward. From my understanding we have great partnership with Mali Rising and that partnership is so important to us even it is hard to meet our needs hundred percent.

This principal peer meeting has been very fruitful to me as also my first time to attend it since i just became a principal. I have already learned a lot from it. I actually hope we will have more peer meetings so not only we are more connected and can share a lot of things with others principals but also learn many things from each other. I really appreciated that I am one of the participants and hope it won’t be the last. It allows us to exchange ideas about issues and success in our schools ...

As a new participant, I understood a lot about the partnership with Mali Rising and learned a lot from my peers in terms of fixing some of my problems in school. I am thankful to Mali Rising for all the great things they have been doing for my school.