By Hindaty Traore, Girls’ Project Manager

At the end of each school year, the Girls’ Project hosts a big adventure for high scoring girls — a trip to the capitol city. For many girls, this will be their first trip to the big city so it is a great motivator to get their grades up. We’ve seen girls work hard to make sure they can get on the bus to Bamako!

One of the objectives of the visit to Bamako was to introduce the girls to new things that will help them improve their knowledge in their studies and in Malian culture, but also to entertain them and encourage them to work hard at school. With this goal in mind, we take girls to see inspiring national treasures. This year, the girls visited the National Zoo and a national park.

Sometimes it is hard to predict what will be the “new” and exciting thing that the girls are excited to tell their friends at home about. This year, there were two big new things that seemed to rise to the top for the girls:

1) The girls discovered for the very first time many different trees with their scientific names. This real world discovery enriched their knowledge in terms of their studies, because they had studied certain trees but they had never seen them in real life. The girls were able to get a clear idea of ​​different foreign trees, tall trees, and flowers that they had never seen before.

2) The girls discovered the joy of cotton candy! The girls were lucky enough to come across a cotton candy seller that the girls didn't know existed. All the girls started tearing off a piece everywhere. They said it was sweet cotton.

Diawelé T. affirmed that this visit allowed her to know a lot about the history of certain animals and trees which are very different from the trees they have in their village.

 “I am very happy to participate in this visit because I discovered a lot of things that I did not know about like Chinese bamboo, hyena, and the wolf. I also saw other trees which had really hard to pronounce scientific names like the Oxytenanthera Abyssinica,” said Diawelé. “The visit transformed our lives. I had never left our village and I did not think that I would one day have the opportunity to discover the capital and such impressive new things as a student.”

Diawelé is a very curious and intelligent girl who is always ready to discover new things. She is 13 years old. She is in 7th grade at Mana's Little Heroes Academy I. According to her, this visit allowed her to see how passionate she is about nature. This is why she wants to be a biology teacher. During this visit, Diawelé put herself in the shoes of a biologist. Every time she sees a strange tree or flower, she goes closer to look at the name and writes it down in her little notebook.

After the visit, all the girls started to draw trees and the animals they loved from the zoo, and to write little stories to remember the moment. We were so glad to share this trip with the hard studying girls of the Girls’ Project!