By Hindaty Traore, Girls’ Project Manager

Last school year in Mali was an incredibly topsy-turvy one because of the pandemic, the teachers' strike, a coup, and the political protests. As a result, classes were suspended several times.

Despite this situation, I am proud to report that the Girls' Project was able to carry out the activities that we planned for the year. These activities were football competitions, Girls Group meetings, payment of school fees for girls, Great Girls Read reading sessions, radio announcements to invite parents to enroll their girls, meeting with mothers of students, screening of videos of career women, distribution of menstrual kits, and much more.

Among these activities, I especially enjoyed the Great Girls Read reading sessions. These sessions include joint reading activities and homework to improve girls’ reading skills. I am especially proud of this work because although I did not originally plan to tackle something as hard as helping girls learn to read, we were able to carry it out successfully.

Great Girls Read allowed the girls to develop a taste for reading, researching, and learning their lessons. The teachers as well as the parents very much appreciated these reading sessions. Why? All too often students arrive in middle school with very poor reading skills and struggle to learn the advanced lessons as a result.  

I also liked the jealousy of the boys, because it was rooted in something good. The boys envy the Girls Group meetings and Great Girls Read with the girls. For example, during one of our visits to Diorila, before our meeting the boys took members of the Girls’ Project “hostage.” The boys wanted to understand why we always meet girls and not boys. Some of the boys joked that it is because we were plotting against them.

Because of this little misunderstanding, I spoke with the boys for 30 minutes. Through this talk, I let the boys know that boys and girls have the same right especially in the field of education and that in our villages unfortunately boys are given priority over girls by parents. Then we talked a bit about the themes we discuss with the girls. They found it interesting.

One of the boys let us know that when we meet the girls, each time they look at us with great envy. After talking to the boys, I told myself that the boys needed to be made more responsible so that there was no problem between the two.

Our solution was to create a buddy system between a girl to one or two boys. The boys must check to be sure that the girl is able to attend school, encourage her all the time, and treat her with respect. If the girls succeed in their school year, it means that the boys have also succeeded in their mission. Both the boys and girls will be commended for their wonderful work at the end of the year.

Finally, what also touched me a lot was the confession of President of the School Committee of Tamala about the girls' project. According to him, despite having accepted the project in their village, they had concerns.

At the beginning they thought that the Girls’ Project had only come to cause their own daughters to revolt against them, but the more the years go by the better the girls are educated and the girls focus more on their studies. He also noted that there had been fewer teenage pregnancies. According to him, when the girls are at home they only talk about what they have done with Hindaty and what they are going to do for the next Girls’ Project meeting.

I cannot wait to start a new year with new activities like filming the girls as they read texts at the start of our Great Girls Read reading session…we will film them again at the end of the year to show their improvement!