Powerful Women Bringing Change to Africa

The African Union recently declared 2010-2020 African Women’s Decade. A recent article on Aljazeera featured an interview by South2North with two powerful women in Africa who are bringing change to their countries.

Globally women make up about half the world’s population and yet they rarely come close to holding leadership positions of power in government. In the US, only six out of 50 states have a female governor. In Africa, there are only two female presidents, out of 54 African Union member states. But women like Joyce Banda and Dr. Mamphela Ramphele are overcoming social and cultural obstacles and are showing the world that there are opportunities for women in the political arena in Africa today.

President Joyce Banda of Malawi used to sell vegetables in the markets. Today, she is the first Southern African woman to lead a country. Time magazine has also named her one of the world’s most influential leaders. President Banda openly talks about overcoming abuse in her previous marriage and says the key to women having the courage to remove themselves and their children out of situations of domestic violence is financial dependence on their husbands. When women have opportunities to make money, they have options and aren’t forced to stay in abusive marriages.

 President Banda has made some radical changes not only in her country but with her cabinet- selling the presidential jet, luxury cars, and reducing her salary by 30 percent. “When I took over, the economy had almost collapsed. I told Malawians we needed to pass through difficult times," Ms Banda said in an interview. “I cut my own salary by 30% to show we are making sacrifices." 

Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, a woman raised in rural South Africa overcame the obstacles of living under a harsh apartheid system to become a doctor, activist and businesswoman. Today she is launching her own political platform in South Africa and planning to run against the mostly male political party started by Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress (ANC). Ramphele speaks about her new political platform Agang, and how her success is a result of her parents holding up a very high standard for her: "You can’t avoid it. In a way, as a woman, you have to go into leadership positions expecting that you will be undermined, and therefore you have to stand up and make sure that those who are trying to undermine you don’t get a chance. You don’t do that by playing the male game, but you do that by leveraging the strengths of women leadership."

90 percent of the literacy programs ProLiteracy supports around the world are made up of women. We believe that when we educate a woman, we educate an entire community.

Click here to learn more about ProLiteracy’s Women in Literacy Initiative.

57 Million Children Not in School

An article in The Times of India titled, “Unesco study: Number of out of school children stagnate; aid to basic education falls by six percent” by Manash Pratim Gohain, describes the current funding problems in basic education. UNESCO just released a study showing that 57 million children were not enrolled in school in 2011. In addition to this statistic, a report found that basic education funding declined by 6% overall between 2010 and 2011.

A country exemplifying the linkage between basic education funding and school enrollment rates is India. “India receives the largest share of aid to basic education of any country in the world (10%),” says Gohain. Between 2000 and 2006, India reduced out of school numbers from 20 million to 2.3 million. Gohain also found that “Children from poor households are three times more likely to be out of school than children from rich households. ”In sub-Saharan Africa, where aid to education decreased by 8%, more than one out of every three children dropped out of primary school.

Besides the challenge of getting children to start school is the issue of whether they learn once in the classroom. Increased funding means that more qualified teachers can be hired and safer learning environments can be built. “Donors must renew their commitments so that no child is left out of school due to lack of resources,” says Unesco’s director-general, Irina Bokova. Funding for basic education is vital because uneducated children become uneducated adults, leading to future societal and economic problems. 

Read the full article here: http://bit.ly/14XdRGC

Nigeria Releases 1 Billion to Revitalise Adult Literacy Education

Last week the Minister of State for Education in Nigeria, said the Federal Government has released N1 billion as part of efforts to boost Adults and Non-Formal Education in the country.

Mr. Wike made the statement at a workshop organised by the Department of Continuing Education and Extension Services in conjunction with National Commission for Mass literacy, Adult and Non-Formal Education, and UNESCO.

He said the fund was in the custody of UNESCO to enable it to work with other stakeholders to revitalize adult literacy and non-formal education in the country.

The minister, represented by the Deputy Director, Nomadic Education Commission, Kaduna, Ibrahim Yemta, said President Goodluck Jonathan had set up a committee to revitalize the sector. He said the committee met with stakeholders in the six geo-political zones to identify problems affecting the sector and find lasting solutions to such problems.

In his address, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Maiduguri, Ibrahim Njodi, identified inadequate funding and the lack of professional development opportunities for educators as some of the problems affecting adult education in the country.

Mr. Njodi said inadequate and inconsistent funding, coupled with poor training, monitoring and evaluation, had been affecting the sector's performance.

" Majority of adult educators are untrained, especially on basic literacy, while governments often post school teachers to man adult education programs instead experienced adult educators."We can solve some of these problems through adequate allocation of resources to meet the needed objectives," Mr. Njodi said.

Happy International Women's Day

ProLiteracy celebrates women around the world today who are changing their lives and communities through literacy!

The majority of our programs internationally serve women. Since 1991 ProLiteracy’s partner programs have provided effective literacy instruction to more than 2,000,000 of the world’s disadvantaged women. Through literacy our partners help women like Nang Tat break out of traditional cultural practices that don’t allow them to pursue opportunities for education.

Nang Tat was one of the first young woman in her village to complete a literacy course and be trained as a teacher. She is from the Kavet ethnic minority group, in the remote Lamuey Oh Village of Ratanakiri Province in northeastern Cambodia. Kavet women are extremely marginalized—many are forced to remain unemployed or to work as laborers in rice fields earning low wages.

After learning to read and write, Tat felt it was important to help other women in her village learn how to read and write in their native language.  She participated in a training course to become a literacy teacher, and later went on to attend a math/numeracy training to help launch the first women’s math classes in her village. The women were highly motivated to learn basic numeracy and marketing skills, so that they could get fair prices for their agricultural products in the marketplace.

Today Tat has is teaching math to 30 pre-literate students in the new math classes launched in her village.  Most of them are married women who do not know how to count and have never learned to read.

South African Literacy Program Reaches More Than Two Million Adults

The fight for literacy has recently seen a great deal of success in South Africa. The country’s Kha ri Gude literacy program reported that it has registered more than two million adults for basic literacy education since its inception in April of 2008.

The government-sponsored campaign consists of a massive network of volunteer educators who oversee a minimum of 18 students each year. These educators are just one part of a hierarchy of local supervisors and district coordinators who report to the Department of Basic Education.

Through this system, Kha ri Gude is able to not only distribute hundreds of thousands of sets of comprehensive curriculum materials, but also collect learner portfolios to measure and assess students’ skill levels upon completion of the program. The result is that more than 40,000 literacy classes take place across South Africa each year, and 80 percent of those enrolled complete the six-month program.

The program’s efforts are dedicated to reducing the number of nonliterate adults in South Africa by 50 percent by 2015, as part of the country’s commitment to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. This is crucial, since more than 169 million adults in sub-Saharan Africa lacked basic literacy skills as of 2010.

For more information about Kha ri Gude, read the full article here: http://mg.co.za/article/2012-11-09-a-hidden-education-success-story.

President of Malawi Calls for Women’s Education

In a CNN article we recently came across titled, “Educating girls like Chrissie can save a nation,” Joyce Banda, the first female president of Malawi, called for the education and empowerment of women around the world.

As a child, Banda was fortunate enough that her family was able to pay her school fees and allow her to finish her education.  Her best friend Chrissie, on the other hand, could not afford that same opportunity, and while Banda now speaks on the floor of the United Nations General Assembly on behalf of her country, Chrissie lives in poverty with her many children.

Failing to provide women with the necessary support they require to finish their schooling and improve their economic standing will “squander the potential of girls such as Chrissie,” as Banda put it.  She pledges to keep women’s education at the focus of her presidency as a means to reduce poverty and strengthen Malawi’s economy.

“When we empower women with education and access to reproductive services, we can lift an entire nation,” said Banda.

Read the full article here.

ProLiteracy works every day to empower women through our Women in Literacy initiative. Read more about it on our website.

Linking Mothers’ Literacy with Children’s Health

A woman from ProLiteracy's partner program in Ethiopia, watering her crops. Literacy has allowed her to start and grow her own small business selling carrots.

It has long been proven that mothers with higher levels of education raise healthier children, but a group of Harvard University professors and alumni set out to understand exactly why that is.  Their book, Literacy and Mothering: How Women’s Schooling Changes the Lives of the World’s Children, explores the question, “What is it about schooling that affects child survival, fertility, and the behavioral development of children?”

The answer?  Literacy. Studies in Mexico, Zambia, Venezuela, and Nepal all revealed that literacy skills are what forge the link between education and children’s health.  Mothers who have more formal schooling are uniquely equipped to understand and apply public health information regarding hygiene skills.  They are also more likely to trust the advice of doctors and public health officials. The process of learning literacy skills actually better prepares women to grasp and follow instructions regarding the health of their children. 

To read more about Literacy and Mothering or the results of these studies, visit http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news-impact/2012/09/illiteracy/.