By Adama Kone, Teacher Project Coordinator

Most of my work focuses on helping Mali Rising’s teachers, but I always enjoy it when I get a chance to be part of the Girls’ Project. My role is to host discussions about girls’ education with boys in our Girls’ Project villages. My goal is to inspire the boys to be allies to their sisters and female classmates and speak out to support their education. At a recent meeting, I found a young man — Sirbiry Doumbia — who was already an avid supporter of girls’ education. Here’s what he told me:

“My name is Sibiry Doumbia, and I am a sixth grader at Ben Dixon Elementary School. I was born and raised in Manabougou, where I am currently attending school. I am fourteen years old and I like school because I get to play soccer with my classmates over the breaks and we sometimes play hide and see around the school. I like all our teachers because they help us learn many things and tell us funny stories sometimes. My teacher goes to my family sometimes to chat with my parents and that makes me proud of myself and gives me a chance to ask him questions sometimes while visiting my parents.

I am willing to help my sisters at school and home because I know they can study well just like me. My sister is in third grade and she likes school too but she often gets sick from malaria and cannot come to school. That makes me sad because I want my sister to be able to study well. I help her sometimes with her homework, but not every time because I myself do not know everything they do in third grade.

In my opinion, girls need parent’s support even more than boys do because they are abused by parents with forced or early marriage or too many chores. Parents do not ask their daughters’ opinion on early or forced marriage. Parents just pull them out of school and send them away in marriage in my village here. Some boys also are mean to our sisters at school or even on the way to school. I hate these things because they make girls drop out of school in my village.

Our sisters can become important people one day like school principals, ministers, or doctors.  If they do not study, they can never become so.

Today, this is is my first time to join a meeting like this and I like it because I know it will help me and my classmates understand girls’ education better. I want to let all my classmates know that we can help our sisters in many ways. We can do things like doing homework with them, telling them the importance of girls’ education, telling them to be careful with boys , and not go to bigger towns to get jobs because they can do well in school too and have better lives in the future.

I would like to have an educated girl as wife because she will be able to work and help me too. She will be able to read letters, road signs, instructions on medicine, and more. I think an educated girl can take good care of her husband and do better at counting and saving money. Thanks to this meeting, I am now more aware of the importance of girl’s education and I am more committed to supporting my sisters than ever now so they can also help their parents in future as well as boys. Thank you, Mali Rising Foundation!”