Teens continue their education close to home

Sana Ly, a girls' scholarship recipient, looks over her notes in the new middle school classroom financed by USAID in the rural community of Maka. Photo by R. Nyberg, USAID

MAKA, Senegal -- Sana Ly walks 30 minutes from her home in Colibantan to her new middle school in the nearby village of Maka. But she doesn’t complain. She and her friends in this dusty, rural area of southeastern Senegal consider themselves lucky to be able to continue their studies.

For countless Senegalese children, finishing elementary school means the end of their education as there are no public middle schools nearby. Parents often lack the means to send their children to larger towns with more schools. So young teens are often forced to close their books and work on the family farms. Or sit around idly.

Social pressures to leave school are particularly intense for young girls in communities like Maka. By the time they reach Ly’s age – 17 – they could be married and possibly pregnant. Parents in rural areas often do not support girls’ desire for education. At Ly’s school, for example, there are currently 121 students: 91 boys and only 30 girls.

“We are trying to make the parents aware of the need to send their girls to school,” said principal Pape Djibril Bathily while giving a tour of the buildings completed for the start of this school year. “But in a farming community like this one, working the soil brings economic capital.”

As it stands now, more than a quarter of Senegalese girls will never learn to read or write. And only 16% of teachers in Senegal are women. Some of them, like their male counterparts, still instruct under trees. But with support from USAID and other development partners, this situation is starting to change.

Unlike thousands of students their age, Maka middle schoolers don’t have to leave home and find lodging at distant schools. Of the 78,500 primary school graduates in 2005, 21% of them were unable to continue their education at the middle school level. Many of these were girls.

The entire community of Bandafassi gets involved in supporting education at the USAID-financed middle school. Photo by R. Nyberg, USAID

To help address this gap, USAID’s current five-year, $20 million education program is increasing middle school enrollment and improving the quality of middle school education, assisting the Government of Senegal with its goal to provide each child at least 10 years of education. Working in partnership with local communities, which bear one-fourth of the overall costs through electricity, some construction material, water, and labor, USAID’s project team has built 18 schools and rehabilitated eight others in Senegal’s Fatick, Kolda, and Tambacounda regions for use during the 2005-2006 academic year.

Each of these new schools includes four classrooms, a library, a science laboratory, a computer room, a principal’s office, a room for teachers, and separate bathrooms for girls and boys. Within walking distance of home, these rural schools provide improved, modern learning conditions for students. As a result, 53,817 students in the regions assisted by USAID were enrolled in school last year, an increase of over 28%. Community ownership runs high where the schools have opened. New school management committees are in place to ensure that education resources are used well.

“It is a source of pride to have a school of such quality in this community,” noted Bathily. “It motivates the students.”

Ly is also fortunate to be one of 1,000 young Senegalese girls from the same three regions to benefit from a scholarship under the Africa Education Initiative (AEI), a U.S. Presidential Initiative. Sitting in a new classroom built with USAID funds, she shows her new school bag with essential books, notebooks, and other supplies bought with part of her stipend that is also used to cover school fees.

“We are very happy because we would otherwise not have the means to pay for these things,” Ly, the daughter of a peanut and millet farmer and one of three children, said. “With this scholarship it is much easier for me to study.”

Also under the AEI, USAID has provided 270,000 textbooks and carried out training for nearly 1,000 teachers, school principals and teacher trainers in such topics as student motivation and evaluation and school management. Last year, more than 600 new teachers were trained in basic teaching techniques.

USAID has also engaged the public and private sectors in education through two partnership agreements. Under a five-year, $400,000 Global Development Alliance (GDA) with SONATEL, Senegal’s major telecommunications company, 100 scholarships were awarded to high school girls from socio-economically disadvantaged families in the three targeted regions. Fourteen mentors for these girls have already been trained under this initiative. And a five-year, $800,000 agreement with Microsoft and the Ministry of Education will promote the use of computers and information technology in 500 schools. Many teachers have already benefited from computer training as the new middle schools prepare to equip computer labs.