education – A2Empowerment Blog

Meet the Girls: Fatima Abdullahi

The following profile comes courtesy of Dicko Sulle, the interim head of English Language and Literature of English Expression at GSS Upkwa.

Fatima Abdullahi Photo courtesy of Dicko Sulle

Meet Fatima Abdullahi, an orphan who never saw her real father. Her father was shot dead by thieves when she was just 2 years old. Fatima and her younger sister, Maryam Abdullahi lived with their maternal grandmother after their mother remarried another man. Fatima is currently in form five while her sister, Maryam is in form three in GSS Upkwa. Fatima is a fourth time recipient of the A2Empowerment scholarship and one of the brightest and focused on achieving her goals in life. She plans to becoming a nurse and is assiduous, punctual in class with strong interest in extra-curricular activities. Fatima is engaged and open-minded which allows her interact freely more than many others. This quality makes many to see her as role model who can trigger positive mentality change in the Aku community regarding girls’ education.

The Aku is a community with rigid traditional patterns that relegate women to the background. They believe the best place for women is the kitchen and girls are married off as early as twelve years. They believe that sending girls to school is exposing them to taboo behaviors like premarital sex and early pregnancy which families regard as abomination. To have a child out of wedlock is considered a public disgrace and the safest way to avoid it is marrying off girls early enough. Note that the Aku community number about 40,000 inhabitants and there are only two girls who have ever reached high school. Due to cultural prejudice, none of the two went any significant way in achieving their life goals, one of them ended up marrying a stark illiterate husband as a third wife while the other one is trying a living as a nurse with a private health unit.

You may be wondering why I began by associating Fatima’s story with her sister’s, Maryam. It is not out of mere coincidence. Both girls have been under stiff pressure to marry. Last year, their uncles attempted to marry Fatima off to his son. After strong resistance, Fatima and I rallied her maternal uncles to isolate the uncle and stop the marriage. After conceding defeat, this uncle never completely withdrew his bid. This time around, he has succeeded to gain Fatima’s paternal grandfather’s support to push the deal again and two of them are making considerable advances. Grandparents’ opinions are usually treated with much respect in the Aku community and Fatima’s marital life is now hanging in a balance. They have already succeeded to marry off Fatima’s younger sister Maryam who is only 13 and the spotlight is now entirely focused on Fatima.

Fatima is now only 17 and the Cameroon legal system requires in its section 356 (2), that anyone who forces a girl under 18 years old into marriage is liable to imprisonment of up to two years whatever the mitigating circumstances. Fatima is poised to defend her right to education and marry only at the appropriate time but her family pressure is already showing visible signs of psychological wear down. Her school attendance rate has dropped, she has been regularly sick and she fears that her end of course official examination in June 2018, will be negatively affected. Fatima’s story is not an isolated case of girls being married off against their will. But her story has already sparked hard conversations on the phenomenon because of her interest in attending school and asserting her voice regarding her marital life.

I am confident Fatima will win the battle and pave the way for many more girls to assert their voices. My role in Fatima’s story is not to entirely stand against a long term tradition of early marriages, but to give education preference in the lives of girls. Standing against this tradition will only antagonize me with the community and hinder my ability to continue talking about girls’ education. My view is to seek alternative ways how this phenomenon does not stop girls’ access to education by encouraging community members to accept married women can go to school. To speak about this with authority and provide a palpable example, I have sent my own wife to school from her marital home. Rashida, whose story started in a similar way like Fatima, is in form three in GHS Wum and my goal is to empower her to join her voice to mine in advocating girls’ education in the future.

Who We Are–PCV Emily Strauss

Emily Strauss is one of our awesome PCV’s: below is a speech she gave about A2Empowerment in 2011. Thanks to Emily and several others, we’ve only grown and improved as an organization since the time this speech was given!

Good evening.

As Anne just said, I was in Peace Corps Cameroon between 2006 and 2008, and was the lucky volunteer into whose lap this project happened to fall. I was sitting in the Yaounde transit house, and Sylvie, our Cameroonian funding coordinator, came in and said, “There is an American woman who has been emailing me. She wants to do something for girls’ education. Can you do it?” I didn’t even really think about it, I just said, “Yeah, I can work with that.” So I started brainstorming and emailing Anne, and A2Empowerment was born, as was our long-lived and rewarding cyber-friendship.

My region was an excellent candidate for this project for several reasons. The Adamaoua province is one of the least populated and poorest provinces in Cameroon. Infrastructure is minimal – the only paved road is the one leading to the capital of the next province. Most of the population is Muslim, and women and girls are often second-class citizens, in every sense of the term.

Cameroon has a very male-dominated and highly sexualized culture. The school where I taught had six hundred students, only one hundred of them girls. We lost 20 or 30 girls over the course of every year to pregnancy or marriage. The reasons were various, but often boiled down to the fact that in large families with limited resources, girls were required to sacrifice their prospects to relieve the burden on their families. In some cases, this meant marriage; in others, modified forms of prostitution. The girls most at risk for this were those between 13 and 16 – generally, once girls finished the first three (of seven) years of school, odds were much better that they would finish entirely. For this reason, we decided to target girls in this age range.

It’s been a while, so the girls with the stories I remember are the ones that I helped select, that came out of my village. One was a fourteen-year-old who had just begun school whose father was in prison. One was the daughter of a subsistence farmer whose family lived miles away, on the Central African border. She was looked after by the pastor in the village, who said that her father cried when he was told that she had been awarded a scholarship, and could go to school the next year. The day after the scholarship notifications went out, one of my colleagues told me that one of our girls couldn’t accept her scholarship, because her father had promised her to an older husband. I flew off the handle, got depressed, and thought we would have to find someone else. My colleague told me not to give up, and we went to talk with her father the next day. (My colleague talked. I controlled myself). He agreed to postpone the marriage, and sent his daughter to school the next year. In area where life is so difficult in general, and for women in particular, you can imagine that these stories are pretty representative of the girls that we help.

A scholarship gives a girl more than just another year in school. Our scholarships are renewable yearly if a girl’s grades are high enough, and we do renew most of our rewards. While the program is still new enough that we haven’t graduated many girls, it’s encouraging that most of the girls who enter our program stay in it. As part of the award, we also include seminars for the girls and their parents. We educate them on health issues, like AIDS and birth control; we also expose them to the possibilities that can exist for women, even in the Adamaoua, by having role model conferences with professional Cameroonian women. The girls get to develop friendships – the adults get to see what we’re doing with their daughters, and can take revised attitudes and useful information home to benefit other female children. It is a truth acknowledged even among the more conservative Muslims in the area that an educated woman will raise a healthy and educated family, increasing the favorable prospects for her children. Finally, earning a scholarship gives the girls the opportunity – often, the only one they will get – to achieve something and be recognized and rewarded for it. Our scholarships are renewable yearly if the girls’ grades are high enough. This means that not only can they put themselves all the way through school if they wish, but that they gain a measure of control and agency over their own lives. It’s otherwise extremely unlikely they could ever contemplate, or much less achieve these things.

And thats it!

United State of Women

Peace Corp Volunteer, Kathleen Kirsch (served in Education volunteer in Babadjou, West Region 2014-2016), attended a summit called the United State of Women in June. Here’s what she said about her awesome experience:

Last week I attended the first White House Summit on women and girls’ issues- the United State of Women. This summit brought together 5,000 women from around the world to focus on “pillars”- topics that included Violence Against Women, Health and Wellness, Economic Empowerment, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Educational Opportunity, Civic Engagement and Leadership.

The panels and speakers can be viewed here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/10/white-house-united-state-women-summit

The speakers were amazing, with a highlight being the panel with Oprah and Michelle Obama.

The two most powerful speeches were by Vice President Joe Biden, who made an impassioned speech about violence against women, and President Barack Obama’s speech, which can be viewed here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/06/14/follow-along-united-state-women

There was a lot of discussion in the panels about Let Girls Learn and girls’ education that directly related to the work A2 Empowerment is doing in Cameroon. I participated in smaller break out sessions which I chose based upon my Peace Corps projects (specifically on HIV/AIDS prevention and as a math and physics teacher). I attended one session on girls’ HIV/AIDS risks and another on getting girls into STEM fields through education.

The summit’s format was large plenary sessions targeting their pillar topics, broken down into panels and solution seminars focusing on best practices for those issue areas. More so than all of the fantastic panelists, it was the women I met throughout the day who are doing grassroots work in women’s health, education and empowerment every day who were awe inspiring.

I’ll close with my favorite part from President Obama’s speech:

“It will take leadership. It will take the right policies. It’s going to take creating more opportunities. It requires us telling each other and our children the right stories — because the stories we tell matter.

We admire the men who shaped our country, and rightfully so, the men we see as heroes — from Alexander Hamilton to Muhammad Ali — for their confidence and their courage in believing they could change our nation, this idea of self-creation, that there’s nothing holding us back. In them, we see America itself, constantly reinventing itself, fearless, looking out over the horizon at the next frontier.

But our country is not just all about the Benjamins — it’s about the Tubmans, too. We need all our young people to know that Clara Barton and Lucretia Mott and Sojourner Truth and Eleanor Roosevelt and Dorothy Height, those aren’t just for Women’s History Month. They’re the authors of our history, women who shaped their destiny. They need to know that.

A woman did not magically appear on a space shuttle. It took Sally Ride’s relentless commitment, Mae Jemison’s boundless courage to shatter that glass ceiling. A group of California farmworkers — they weren’t just handed their rights. It took Dolores Huerta organizing and mobilizing, fighting for the dignity and justice they deserved.

Rosa Parks wasn’t simply a tired seamstress who sat down by accident. She was a civil rights leader with the eye of a strategist and the heart of a warrior. She had the confidence to board on that bus, the courage to risk her own life and liberty for the sake of ours. History did not fall into her lap — she seized that moral arc and she bent it with her bare hands in the direction of justice.

That’s the story that’s still being written, today, by our modern-day heroes like Nancy Pelosi or Sonia Sotomayor or Billie Jean King or Laverne Cox or Sheryl Sandberg or Oprah Winfrey or Mikaila Ulmer or Michelle Obama — the countless ordinary people every day who are bringing us closer to our highest ideals. That’s the story we’re going to keep on telling, so our girls see that they, too, are America — confident and courageous and, in the words of Audre Lord, “deliberate and afraid of nothing.”

That’s the country we love, and I’ve never been optimistic — as optimistic as I am now that we’re going to create a country where everybody, no matter who they are or what they look like or where they come from or who they love, can make of their lives what they will. And together, we can build a world that’s more just and more prosperous and more free. That’s a job for all of us.”

We are the United State of Women.

Giving Thanks

A2Empowerment scholarships would not be possible without all the help we receive from those in Cameroon. Today, we would like to give a special thanks to Buba Sulle, who serves as an English teacher at GSS Upkwa and president of the Aku Cultural and Development Association (ACUDA). Sulle co-facilitates A2E sessions for the girls and as they working their way through the curriculum, they have seen real improvements in the self-confidence of each girl. ACUDA and Buba Sulle are largely responsible for A2Empowerment’s success in Upkwa and we are so happy to have their help.

Thanks to the awesome PCV, Sean Gray, for passing this info along.

A letter from Buba Sulle to A2Empowerment:

A2E Appreciation

Some letters from our A2E Scholars!

We love receiving feedback from our A2E scholars. At the beginning of the year the girls receive their scholarship contracts:

At the end of the year we received some great reflections from the girls about how the A2Empowerment scholarship helped them and their families:

Thanks to our Peace Corp Volunteer, Mary Screen, for sending over the reflections and the great pictures!

A2Empowerment Scholarship Winners

Our A2E Scholarship winners! The photo features our Peace Corp volunteers, Alex & Joyce Hall, along with the principle (left) and vice principle (right)!

This photo includes the A2E Scholarship winners and their family members that came to the information meeting for the family contract.

A2Empowerment Gift Bags

Some of our A2Empowerment scholars receiving our A2E goodie bags with items that include pens & pencils, bracelets, folders, hair tires, etc. Thanks to Dick Sulle, the interim head of the English Language and Literature of English Expression, for the awesome photos! Remember it only costs $75 to send a girl to school in Cameroon, so donate today!

Happy International Women’s Day!

Happy International Women’s Day from A2Empowerment! Nous sommes Ensemble! We are together!

Meet the Girls: Sa-adatu Adamu

The following profile comes courtesy of Dicko Sulle, the interim head of English Language and Literature of English Expression at GSS Upkwa.

“Sa-adatu Adamu is a first time recipient of the A2 Empowerment
scholarship. Last year, former Peace Corps Volunteer and i missed her
a lot on the program. One of the outspoken and front role player among
all the girls, Sa-adatu Adamu is the type of girl to be on such a
program. In fact, we included her for most of our sessions last year
because she triggers discussions and pulls the girls along in public
speaking. Coming from a community where women play the back role, most
of the girls spoke in their armpits out of shame and shyness. It took
the likes of Sa-adatu to break the silence and even engage the boys in
discussing gender sensitive topics. She is focused and [does] not avoid
eye contact when speaking to her teachers let alone her peers.

SAMSUNG

“Our wish have been to have her on the program and we luckily did. She
is also one of those girls who has multitudes of potential husbands
for her beauty and elegance. ” Sa-adatu Adamu will not stop school for
any man until she finishes school” her father declared when [I] sought
to know from him how he is coping with the pressure of marrying her
off. On her part, Sa-adatu is bent on continuing school and dreams to
become a journalist. She is writing her end of course GCE Ordinary
Level examination this June 2016. If she succeeds, she will proceed to
high school out of Upkwa, her village. Going out of Upkwa to continue
high school remains a serious threat to the education of not only
Sa-adatu but all the girls. Because this will mean them staying away
from their parents, a thing which majority of parents would not prefer
for various reasons. Among the reasons is the lack of money to pay for
not only fees but house rent and food allowance out of home. The fact
that these girls will live alone is also a highly detested idea as
they think this will further expose their daughters to social vices
like prostitution.

“When [I] sought to know what she feels about the program, this is what
she had to say, ” I do not know how to thank A2Empowerment for this
scholarship. My parents are just too happy and it has increased their
pride in me. Now they see me as a girl who can make a difference in
the society”. Sa-adatu will remain at the center of school activities,
from [singing] the National Anthem during morning devotion to carrying the
school flag during public events. She is also the senior school
prefect girl who sits in all disciplinary council and Parent Teacher
Association meetings as a students representative….”

Buba Dicko

Meet the Girls: Fatimah Abdullahi

The following profile comes from the Dicko Sulle, who is the interim head of English Language and Literature of English Expression at GSS Upkwa.

“Hi there,

“Let me begin the stories of our A2Empowerment girls in GSS Upkwa with
Fatimah Abdullahi.

“Fatimah is an orphan who lost [her] dad to thieves
when she was still a few years old. She grew up with her grand mother
in Upkwa, a resettlement camp for 1986 Lake Nyos survivors. Fatimah is
a second time recipient of the scholarship award and is by far the
best in academics, punctuality, dedication to community service and
humbleness. She is a role model with a big dream of becoming a medical
doctor. She is now 17 years old and plans to graduate from secondary
school next year and go on to high school. Recently, her uncles
attempted to pull her out of school to marry one of her cousins. She
remained strong and determined to resist until the plan was finally
halted. This term that just ended, her performance in school was
encouraging more than ever before. “[I] will work hard to merit the
support of people until [I] graduate from school and get a job” she
recently declared to me a few weeks back when [I] sought to know how she
was faring on. Like all the other girls in the Aku community, Fatimah
wouldn’t have been in school if GSS Upkwa was not created. The school
is now host to some 57 girls less than 1% of whom would not have been
in school if the school was not opened.

“In the Aku community, secular education has just begun to sink deep.
Previously, Aku had total distrust for secular education. They claimed
that children who go to school end up morally bankrupt with unwanted
pregnancy being the inevitable for the girl child. It was considered
a taboo for one’s daughter to have a child out of marriage. Hence
girls were married off as early as twelve years old. Even now, many
parents only allow their girl children in school only as long as a
husband does not show up. Every year, we have kept losing many girls
to early marriages. But girls like Fatimah and a few others are poised
to change the situation. It is also my wish to see this happen.”

Note: This post was updated because Mr. Dicko Sulle was misidentified as principal at GSS Upkwa.