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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.

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 unsure whether 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 self-respect. I felt they were holding up a mirror to me and challenging me to respond.”

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 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.

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.

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.

Among those helped were Cecila and Makarita, the girls Ann worried about after meeting them 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.

An unexpected benefit of the program, Ann said, 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.”

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.

To read an expanded version of this article, click here.

Skoll Extends Deadline for New Heroes Match

Even James Bond has been inspired by The New Heroes, the PBS documentary series sponsored by the Skoll Foundation that features 12 compelling stories of social entrepreneurs around the world. Pierce Brosnan, who played James Bond in several films, and his wife, Keely, were moved to contribute $10,000 to Children’s Town in Zambia after viewing the story about the nonprofit organization in The New Heroes.

In addition, more than 900 people have requested free DVDs to host New Heroes House Parties in 46 states and 33 countries. It is estimated that 4.5 million viewers have seen the series, and 10 to 12 million will see it over the life of the project. To date, individuals have donated $98,546 to New Heroes organizations via GlobalGiving.

In response to this continuing enthusiasm, we are extending our offer to match donations from people who attend a House Party and make a donation through GlobalGiving to organizations featured in the series through February 28, 2006.

Click here to learn more about giving a New Heroes House Party. For more information about The New Heroes, including lesson plans for teachers and tips on raising socially responsible children, visit the PBS New Heroes Web site.

Two New Blogs Debut on Social Edge

Social Edge has launched two new blogs. Global X on the Edge covers international affairs. It is written in English and French; it is then translated into Chinese. The other, called The Kiva Chronicles, is written by Matthew Flannery, a social entrepreneur who is launching a microlending venture in Africa with his wife, Jessica.

Global X updates his blog twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. This self-described "citizen of the world" has recently covered the rocky relations between Turkey and the European Union, the World Bank's "Doing Business" report, the growing problem of AIDS in West Africa, how a Hollywood blogger and an Indian moviemaker are trying to change the world, and how a British social entrepreneur tackled poverty in East Africa.

The Kiva Chronicles tells the real-life story of a couple who decided to change the world, one loan at a time. It is updated twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. On November 2, The Kiva Chronicles was picked up by the Daily Kos, the largest blog in cyberspace with more than 800,000 daily visitors. It was also featured on the World Bank’s Private Sector Development blog.

Both Global X on the Edge and The Kiva Chronicles can be accessed from Social Edge's home page.