November 17, 2005

CAMFED Breaks the Cycle of Poverty in Africa

Before she founded the Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED), Ann Cotton thought she knew why young women in Africa drop out of school early. She assumed it was a cultural reluctance on the part of parents to send girls to school.

Armed with this assumption and a sheaf of questionnaires, Ann went on a field trip to Zimbabwe in 1991. What she saw there shattered her illusions and changed not only her life, but also the lives of thousands of girls who have since been helped by her work.

"I saw a level of poverty I had never seen in my life," Ann said. "It was quite traumatizing." She realized she hadn't even begun to understand the lives of the women, who live in sparse huts in an area devoid of electricity and running water.

Starting from Scratch
Ann discarded her research. She gave all her notes and surveys to the local school to use for writing paper. "I knew everything I had done was now worthless, that it was only worth the paper it was written on," she explained. Instead, she joined girls and young women in their daily activities In Zimbabwe.

Recalling that first trip, Ann remembered hearing two sisters talk about their dream of going to high school. The girls were subsisting on corn and leaves from the bush; one was experiencing a toothache, an early sign of malnutrition. They had built their own hut of wattle and daub, the walls of which were covered with lists of difficult English words they were learning to spell.

These girls, Cecilia and Makarita, were 14 and 16 and didn't know if their parents could afford to send them back to school for the next term at a cost of $18 each. Ann said, "I wasn't going to walk away from these girls. If I had not acted, I would have lost my own self-respect. I felt they were holding up a mirror to me and challenging me to respond."

The Impact of Poverty
Exclusion from education through poverty has far-reaching effects upon African girls. Once they drop out of school, girls usually marry at a young age and have children of their own, who are also destined to be poor. Some young girls, desperate to secure the cost of education, look for "sugar daddies" who pay for sex and put them at huge risk of HIV/AIDS. Ann realized that education of young African women was a powerful force that could break the vicious cycle of poverty and help women achieve better health and economic independence.

After observing the effects of poverty in Zimbabwe, Ann returned to England and finished her master's thesis, but she kept thinking about the girls. She later returned to Zimbabwe and got permission from the Ministry of Education and also the chief in one of the poorest villages to hold a meeting. In a democratic process involving hundreds of people from the community, the village decided to support girls in their education if Ann could help with financial support.

Back in England, Ann's initial fundraising efforts consisted of selling baked goods and used clothing at the open-air Cambridge Market. She was a newcomer to the nonprofit field. But her passion for educating girls in Zimbabwe soon persuaded other people to support the cause and, gradually, through grassroots organizing efforts, Ann formed CAMFED in 1993. She was soon joined by Lucy Lake, a recent graduate of Oxford University who is now CAMFED’s director of international programs.

CAMFED's Far-Reaching Effects
Last year the organization helped more than 71,000 girls in more than a dozen districts in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania stay in school and supported an alumnae network of 4,700. CAMFED has reached more than 427,000 community members in sub-Saharan Africa through education, health and business training programs.

CAMFED makes it a practice to set up affiliate offices in the African countries where it works and recruits local professionals to staff them. "We want a relationship of equals," Ann said. Funding from Skoll is enabling the organization to add professional staff to its U.S. office, extend its measurement systems for growth, and document and share best practices in the field of girls’ education.

The program has a successful retention rate of 96 to 98 percent, and there is strong evidence to show that graduates marry later, have their first child later and have healthier children. They tend to have smaller families and are able to support their families, thus breaking the cycle of poverty.

CAMFED pays all the expenses associated with the girls' education, but Ann stressed that their families contribute in many other ways, such as taking on their daughters' workload in the fields and making sure that they have time to do their homework. In some cases, where high schools are too far from their homes, families work collectively to build and maintain hostels where the girls can stay safely. CAMFED also helps educate numerous AIDS orphans.

An unexpected benefit, Ann added, is that many graduates are turning into what she calls "young philanthropists," supporting the education of other young women not related to them. In 2003, 2,000 women whose educations had been funded by CAMFED were each supporting the education of between two and eight children—not necessarily their own.

"They are saying, 'We must look beyond ourselves.' This is their own initiative," Ann said with pride. "They are creating a better world for themselves and generations to come."

Success Stories
Ann cited numerous examples of young women whose lives have been transformed by CAMFED. Fiona Muchembere, for example, grew up in a village with her grandmother. She completed her education and is now one of two female lawyers in a firm of 15 that advises banks and corporations.

Runyararo Mashingaidze had no chance of going on to high school, despite of being at the top of her primary school class. With CAMFED's support, she completed high school with top grades and studied medicine at a university. Today Runyararo is a doctor reminding hospital staff to treat patients with respect because many of them share her own background of rural poverty.

And what about Cecila and Makarita, the girls Ann met on her first trip to Zimbabwe? With help from CAMFED, the sisters completed their education. Both are now married, have young families and run small businesses.

CAMFED's main office, CAMFED International, is located in Cambridge, England. For information, visit www.camfed.org or email info@camfed.org. The CAMFED U.S.A. board is headed by Fiona Macaulay and is located at 2900 "M" St. N.W., Suite 200, Washington, DC 20007; email usa@camfed.org.

DID YOU KNOW?

According to UNICEF’s 2005 report, "Children Under Threat: The State of the World’s Children":

• 42 percent of all children in the world who die before they are age 5 live in sub-Saharan Africa.
  
• 32 percent of girls in sub-Saharan Africa ages 7 to 18 have never attended school.
  
• 24 million girls in sub-Saharan Africa were out of school in 2002.