Mali middle schools are typically home to an average of four teachers, although our schools range from 3 to 11! Because there are 8 core subjects in Mali’s national curriculum, teachers must cover multiple subjects. For example, the French teacher is usually required to teach history and/or geography as well. Often the English teacher will teach art or another subject. At Christiana Norris Middle School, there are currently four teachers, including the principal.
Working Together for a New School in Banko
By Merritt Frey, Executive Director, with Alou Doumbia, Construction Manager
We are overjoyed that the new middle school for the children of Banko — Christiana Norris Middle School — is now open in Mali and serving kids. Alas, for now we cannot do the typical ceremonial opening with the Norris Family, who generously sponsored the school. Instead, our staff brought a video from the Norris Family to share with the students and interviewed students, staff, and parents about the new school. Over this week, I’ll be sharing stories and interviews from that trip. Today we hear from the president of Banko’s primary school committee [we will hear from the middle school president later], a group of parents and elders who manage the school.
My name is Oumar Doumbia, president of the primary school’s school committees in the village of Banko school. We now have two school management committees thanks to the opening of Christiana Norris Middle School here.
As part of my presidential duties, the village chief and I have been to neighboring villages asking them to send their students to the new middle school. Sending students from other villages to our new middle school will make it easier for children to be educated, because so many of our neighboring villages suffer the same problem we used to suffer – schools too far from home for our students to attend. There were many students out of school or unable to continue their studies due to lack of food and the regular breakdown of their bikes on the trip to school. Because of the distance the children traveled, students from some families actually left our village, and many did not return.
The CAP of Bougouni [the local unit of the Ministry of Education] and the town hall supported us. City hall officials came to meet us to identify our concerns and the challenges we faced in opening a school. Once we had a school, the officials helped advocate for teachers to be assigned to our school. The CAP approved this request and sent us two teachers. This meant the village and the school committee also had to recruit two other teachers, which has been successfully completed.
I especially salute you and the Americans who helped us achieve our goal of building a middle school in Banko. I want this partnership to continue so that this school project progresses. As many children as possible in Banko must be able to access higher education. The parents of the students and we are all at the same level of joy in this project because the additional expenses for the children to reach school, the cost of food, the repair of the bikes, the energy and the journey time are all reduced. I salute the Norris family’s effort to make the school possible.
I ask students to take their studies seriously. I call on parents of students to make sure students attend school regularly. Parents must do everything they can to ensure that children can do well in school because happiness comes. We are very happy that our school is functional because we did not know that it could be done – but now we know everything is possible when we work together!
Celebrating our Girl Leaders!
By Hindaty Traore, Girls Project Manager
Two years ago, we began a new piece of our Girls Project work. After three intense years of work in our initial three Project villages, we trained local young women to return to their village to shepherd the villages’ Girls Group meetings and serve as role models for young girls in the village.
Each year, we carefully select two young women as Girl Leaders in each village. We provided extensive training and support for the Girl Leaders throughout their year of service, along with a stipend. The training of Girl Leaders has enabled them to become aware of their limitations, to mobilize their own resources, and to have confidence in each other.
All of the Girl Leaders had a story before the training. Some girls felt unable to go stand in front of a crowd and convince other girls to continue school, some were shaking, some were crying when they tried to stand in front of a class, and others were not confident in themselves. However, in early April this year’s Girl Leaders left their last training of the year with strong skills and positivity.
This training was an opportunity for the girls to train in teamwork, to raise awareness, to bring out hidden assets. The skills they have learned helped the Girl Leaders serve our Girls Groups, but have also helped them in their larger lives. For example, according to the Girl Leaders their parents treat them differently because they trust the young women more.
A job well done deserves an excellent reward. To salute the wonderful work they have done throughout the school year, Mali Rising awarded the Girl Leaders certificates of recognition. For this presentation of certificates, we met at the Bamako National Park. Half of the Girl Leaders had never been to the park before, so the trip itself was part of the reward! To make the event even more powerful, we invited last school year’s Girl Leaders to attend too – creating a powerful group of young women to celebrate together!
Looking back over the last two years, the 11 Girl Leaders (we have 6 Girl Leaders each year, but one women returned to repeat her service this year) we trained to return to their respective villages to support their younger peers in middle school carried out their tasks successfully. For 9 months the Girl Leaders went to the villages to meet with the girls and help them stay in school and succeed. Girl Leaders are a kind of human transmission of skills, courage, motivation, and role modeling to all girls in their village.
The 11 girls trained in the last two years have become good examples in the village. If fact, there are some girls who dream of being like the Girl Leaders now. The younger girls who are in the village want to take over the role of Girl Leaders someday so they can come home and educate their little sisters in turn!
The benefit of building the leadership capacities of these girls is threefold: it defines the heroines and role models for other young girls, it empowers and makes the Girl Leaders themselves stronger, and it challenges outdated community norms. We love our Girl Leaders!
Check out the photos on this page to see our Girl Leaders as they receive their certificates from me, Hindaty, and explore the National Park together.
A New Principal for a New School
During a recent visit to our new school in Banko, I got to talk with the new principal for the brand new school. The principal is Mr. Mahamadou Diallo. He is thirty-four years old and the father of two children. Mr. Diallo as a principal is new to the village of Banko, but he has been a principal at another school for about five years. In fact, Mr. Diallo started his teaching career years ago far north (about 260 kilometers!) of Bamako. In addition to being principal, Mr. Diallo teaches French in all the three grades in Christiana Norris Middle School of Banko.
Do You Miss International Travel? Boy, I Do.
In preparation for our May 13 Get to Know Mali Volunteer Evening, I’ve been digging around into information about Mali that might be of interest to those of us in North America or Europe. As a side-effect of that research, I’m positively itching to be able to travel again and missing the sights, sounds, and smells of Mali! I figured some of you might be laboring under the same problem so thought I would share a snippet here about 5 places in Mali I wish I was exploring today:
Help! Virtual Volunteers Needed for 2 Special Projects
By Merritt Frey, Executive Director
Well, the good news is that we have been totally overwhelmed with responses to our new Volunteer Campaigns. The bad news? We need some help to manage the influx!
We are looking for two people willing to tackle some support help for our Read to Mali and Notes of Encouragement Campaigns. Each role can be done from anywhere in the U.S. as long as you have a good internet connection and will average about 1 to 3 hours a week.
For the Read to Mali support volunteer, we will ask that you review short (5 to 15 minute) videos from our volunteers to make sure they are kid-friendly and of good quality. You do not have to judge the volunteers’ work — we just need someone to check each video to make sure nothing untoward goes on and that the audio/video quality will work in our classrooms (you do not have to be a video tech — we are just wanting to be sure one can hear the volunteer, etc.). Specs and support will be provided.
For the Notes of Encouragement Campaign, the support volunteer will review notes submitted by volunteers — again making sure that there is nothing untoward in the notes (sometimes young volunteers might think it is funny to add an “exciting” word or two) and that no contact information is shared. The notes will all be scanned into pdf files, so they will be easy to review. Again, specs and support will be provided.
We are hoping whoever steps forward can take on their role for at least a two or three months staring in mid-April. Interested? Email me today please! And thank you…
There's Nothing Like Watching A New School Rise
There are a lot of satisfying parts of this job, but few as pleasing as seeing a whole new school rise from the red soil of a small Mali village. Each year, Mali Rising builds just one or two schools (because we want to be sure we are also providing the support ALL of our schools need to deliver a quality education) and each one is as much of a joy to us as it is to the local village.
Lunchtime in a Mali School
Mali is a country that prioritizes education, despite the many challenges we face with poverty, unrest, and of course the pandemic. One of the biggest challenges for the authorities (and for Mali Rising!) is keeping kids in school until they graduate from middle school. With multiple gold mining areas calling to kids with get-rich-quick dreams, the rural exodus of kids to work and get money, and the long distances walking or biking to get to school every day, many children drop out before they graduate. With the aim of helping stop drop outs, the Mali government has been thinking about many strategies like school lunch program, parent’s involvement, etc. In previous years, many of those strategies did not work very well. However, two years ago, we started noticing a strategy that seemed promising. The government was creating school lunch programs in some rural schools.
Volunteers Needed: You Can't Improve What You Don't Measure!
By Merritt Frey, Executive Director
How do you measure a great education? You tell us! In 2021, Mali Rising is overhauling our approach to measuring the quality of education in our remote, rural Mali schools. We are searching for 2 to 3 people with skills in education, monitoring, and evaluation to help us really understand how to change lives through education.
Advisors will engage with our board committee (Internal Affairs Committee) on this issue and devote 4 to 6 hours a month to research and discussion. We ask Advisors to commit to 10 months of engagement (March-December) if possible. In exchange, Advisors will get to know a wonderful group of volunteers, explore how education works in a different culture, and have access to special content from Mali and our schools.
Interested in learning more and perhaps getting involved? Contact Merritt.
We Need a Few Good (Great!) Communicators
By Merritt Frey, Executive Director
Work hand-in-hand with our board to make a difference — be a Mali Rising Advisor!
Are you a skilled communicator? Maybe you have a background in advertising, or marketing, or public relations? Or maybe you’re an expert in recruiting volunteers and keeping them happy? Or you’ve got mean skills in setting up web-based outreach campaigns using social media, websites, and other online tools? If so, boy do we want to know you better!
Mali Rising has a small staff so volunteers are truly core to all of our work. Without volunteers, we would not be able to build schools, help teachers change lives inside those schools, or send kids off to higher education with scholarships.
Some of our most dedicated volunteers are our board members, but our board needs help! We are looking for two to three Mali Rising Advisors to help our board tackle our 2021 communication goals, without the Advisors having to sign on for the full workload of board service (although Advisors may decide they want to consider board service later!)
These Advisors will work with our External Affairs Committee board members to tackle our 2021 priorities. These include:
Dramatically expanding our Volunteer Project to engage more volunteers in ways that will inspire them but also provide real help for our schools from afar.
Helping to design and launch a new Adopt-A-School campaign that will raise much-needed funds for each participating school while allowing supporters to connect with the work and the students.
A review of our branding and communications style, with a goal of creating an updated style guide and exciting, updated look.
In addition, staff will be working on overhauling our annual gala (which may stay virtual) and expanding our electronic community of friends and supporters.
If you think you have skills that could help us with any of these goals, we’d love to get to know you! Advisors will be asked to participate in bi-monthly zoom calls with the committee, as well as spend several hours each month working in support of a project or projects. In total, we expect Advisors will spend 4 to 8 hours a month volunteering. All work can be done virtually, so you can be based anywhere in the U.S. Interested in learning more? Contact us!
