There are many challenges facing Malian students. In addition to an on-going teacher shortage, water issues, a lack of teaching tools, and overcrowded classrooms, many students miss school due to avoidable illness. Through our Health Project, we are working to reduce that particular problem for our students!
Meet a New Board Member: AJ Davis
We are truly pleased to welcome a new member to our Board of Directors, AJ Davis. She joins our dedicated band of board members in guiding the organization and serving as ambassadors for our work. I sent AJ a few questions to help everyone get to know her just a little bit. Please read on to hear what AJ had to share.
Learning Kits Making a Splash
New Learning Kits Enliven the Classroom
Because basic tools such as textbooks, maps, educational diagrams, or science materials are missing from Mali classrooms, teachers are really limited in how they can prepare and deliver their lessons. But Mali Rising Foundation has long worked to provide textbooks to our classrooms, but this year we added additional tools provided in kits we loan out to schools for two weeks at a time. We provide two types of Learning Kits to our schools – a Language Kit and a Science Kit. The Language Kit provides resources for teaching both French and English, including books, flashcards, and more. The Science Kit is packed full of scientific drawings, tools for active learning like magnifying glasses and rulers, and other tools. We also provided written instruction sheets that give the teachers multiple ideas about how they can easily incorporate the Kit tools into their lessons.
Girls Explore the Lives of Career Women
As part of exposing our Girls Project girls to the diverse career opportunities an education girl can dream of, we recently interviewed some career women in their workplace and videoed the interviews. In the past, we brought these career women to the villages to meet the girls directly but because of the pandemic we took a questionnaire from the girls to the career women.
Mr. Mallé Wins Most Helpful Teacher
Mali Rising teachers work hard to help students and change lives. In Mali’s rural schools, teachers face many challenges such as the lack of electricity, limited teaching tools, poor housing and classrooms, a large number of students in one classroom (often 100 and up!), and more. In spite of all these challenges, many teachers just enjoy helping kids and have great relationships with parents and village leaders. Mali Rising has established annual awards to recognize this dedication and hard work. This year we honored Mr. Mallé Brehima with the Most Helpful Teacher Award.
Something as Simple as a Workbook...
Way back in the early days of the pandemic, we — like everyone else — were scrambling to find ways to keep our kids connected to school as things shut down. School closures in Mali were total…there is no online learning in our remote, rural villages! One tool we decided to test was incredibly simple, but turned out to also be incredibly engaging. That tool is a set of simple, photocopied workbooks we distributed in our villages.
New Teachers Dive In to Learning & Sharing
For the last several years, Mali Rising has hosted teacher peer meetings with many schools. These peer meetings have been very well received by our teachers, so we wanted to get our newest teachers involved as soon as possible. As a result, Christiana Norris Middle School recently joined their first peer meeting. All four of the new school’s teachers participated in the peer meeting, and they were joined by all the teachers from our Trujillo Family Middle School. One of Banko’s participating teachers was Mr. Moumoune Koné
A Chance Meeting Inspires...
Mali Rising’s Girls Project works intensively in eight of our 25 partner villages. However, I visit each of our other schools to meet with the girls there at least once each year – my hope is to help and inspire them at least a little and help them stay in school. With this in mind, in May I visited our schools in the villages of Tanima and Seguessona. On my return from visiting our girls in Tanima, I met a young woman called Dokoro Sissoko.
Volunteers' Hard Work On the Way to Mali
Our volunteers have been going absolutely full speed this spring to create tools and school supplies for our students in Mali. We were all geared up to send the results to Mali via shipping container, when our shipping partnership fell through. However, good deeds do not go unrewarded and last week we were able to sneak a good amount of donated and created supplies on to a shipping container now headed to our students!
