By Hindaty Traore, Girls Project Manager
As part of our Girls Project, after three years of work in a village we train local Girl Leaders to take over leadership of the Project. This allows us to offer leadership training and real-world experience to some amazing young women and to make the Project more sustainable by making the leadership more local. Girl Leaders serve for one year, and we offer them three multi-day trainings throughout their year of service. In this blog post, Hindaty tells the story of one Girl Leader as she attended her second training with us.
The second training session for Girl Leaders was not only a place of learning but also a place where the Girl Leaders shared their first experiences with the Girls Groups from their own villages. (At the time of the second training in December, the Girl Leaders had hosted 3 meetings in their villages.)
While at the training, I spoke with Girl Leader Fatoumata Ouattara. Fatoumata is a young woman who graduated from Sue Chung Chiu Middle School in Simidji three years ago. She is now 20 years old and studying accounting in Bamako. She never imagined she would be standing in front of a group of people talking about anything! When she first met with the Girls Groups, she was very stressed. She says she did not know how the girls were going to behave around her and if she would be able to talk without making a mistake. However, once in front of the girls she said she felt proud because the girls participated well and they were interested in what she was saying.
According to Fatoumata, returning to her village not as a student but as a leader to talk about different topics that the girls were unaware of was a very interesting and enriching experience for both her and the girls. She says she was welcomed by her village like an idol and it enormously her touched because she felt so much more important. Her mother informed her friends that her daughter was very strong now because she teaches girls so much in school (Fatoumata laughed as she told me this!).
Fatoumata thinks that when you are given a job, whatever it is, you have to do it well. By doing it well, you honor yourself, you honor your family, and you honor the people who trusted you. Those people will then have still more confidence in you and you can be entrusted with more important things.
"I thank God and I thank Mali Rising for this training because I learn new things each time we pick a theme to teach. For example in the theme "Wisdom speaks to you,” we ask the groups of girls to learn from the village elders the history of their village — how was the education of girls in the family and in society? That allows the girls not only to know the history of their village but also to know how to do research.
“Today, I can take action in my life, on my own. In my opinion, it is all about the mindset. We are capable of accomplishing things as long as we believe in it, as long as we are supported,” said by Fatoumata.
She thinks that this is an initiative that should be done repeatedly in our country, especially in the villages, because Malian youth need it. Talking about personal development is very important for the empowerment of young people, because in life, we need to set goals; we need to define the values that we must seek to cultivate over the years to be able to progress. We need indicators and examples.
"I think young girls need role models in our country and I really hope that in our village there will be a lot of role models who can inspire other young girls to really take actions and move forward together with their school career. In any case, I wish them all the best,” she concluded.
