By Merritt Frey, Executive Director

Today, October 5, is National Walk to School Day here in the United States, which is great. But for kids in Mali, every day is walk to school day. While here in the US walking to school is rightly encouraged as a good thing, in Mali it can be a huge problem. In fact, the distance kids face on that walk is often the most powerful factor driving them to drop out of school.

In our partner villages, before a middle school was built kids faced an average of a 4 to 5 mile walk each way to school….in some villages it was closer to eight or nine miles. As a practical matter, this meant 90 to 95% of students would drop out of school.

Long walks to school are a major barrier to education in Mali. As you can see in the chart from the Brookings the right, enrollment decreases dramatically with distance. For students living just 2 to 5 kilometers (so 1.6 to 3.2 miles) away from a school, enrollment is less than half what it is for students who live in a village with a school.

Long walks to school cause problems for both boys and girls, but create an even larger barrier for girls. Girls face harassment or assault on their long walk to school. The time the walk takes is time the girls aren’t helping out at home, which is expected and often needed. Girls may even face community disapproval for being out on the road alone. All of these factors often lead parents to pull their girls out of school all together.

This is why we build schools! A better future starts with access to a classroom and the learning it contains. While a classroom alone is not enough — students need good teachers, parental support, learning materials, and more — the first barrier we must knock down is the simplest one…distance.

Does this mean we don’t support walking to school!? Heck no! We celebrate National Walk to School Day and its goals of getting kids active and supporting safe walking and biking to school. AND we say that no one should be forced to walk 2 hours just to get to school. We thank you for bring the joy of learning into villages in Mali.

Learn more about our school construction efforts.