Educating girls means eradicating poverty.

A letter from Campaign for Female Education (Camfed) Tanzania’s Co-Executive Director, Lydia Wilbard, to a girl from a poor family called Desderia, is a very inspiring one.

Published in the organisation’s latest newsletter, the letter encourages Desderia to work hard to achieve her dream of getting an education so as to help her family out of poverty.

Like Desderia, Lydia who too comes from a poor background, struggled to be where she is today. She lost her mother when she was ten and her father was too poor to afford keeping her in school. Lydia would be sent home to collect school fees from time to time and would therefore miss classes for long periods. 

The worst happened when her father died before she completed high school. Lydia had no one to pay her school fees. However, this did not deter her as she fought tooth and nail to ensure she achieved her dream of getting a university degree. And she did achieve her dream, against all odds. Today Lydia holds a Master’s degree from a US university!

“Now I am co-Executive Director of Camfed Tanzania and I am sharing your story with others so they can see what life is like for people like you and me. And what amazing things happen if we’re given a chance,” Lydia tells Desderia in the letter.

Lydia talks, in the letter, about how Desderia and her family used to go without food and how their mother, a peasant, used to struggle to make ends meet. All her family’s needs depended on her meager income as a hand hoe farmer. 

Despite her desire to educate her children, Desderia’s mother could not afford to pay for their secondary education. Her brother dropped out and started a small business to augment the family’s income.
After primary education, Desderia worked in Dar es Salaam as a maid. Life was tough at her employer’s house but she had no alternative. But as a Swahili saying goes, ‘Mungu hamtupi Mja wake’ (God does not abandon his servant). When the exam results were out, Desderia was among those selected to join secondary school.

It’s her brother in the village who broke the good news to her. He told her Camfed would be sponsoring her education. 

When Desderia enrolled in secondary school, her dream was to become a journalist and Lydia tells her in the letter; “You are already half way there. You are on the path to education. And as a journalist I know you will tell the stories of other girls like you so that many more people can have the same chance you had. I wish you every success.” 

Lydia is a role model to girls like Desderia. It is from poor backgrounds like hers and Desderia’s that most of the successful women in our country today come from.

Like Lydia says, girls from poor families can do wonders if given a chance. And this is what Camfed Tanzania, is striving to do. To give girls from poor families a chance to eradicate poverty by helping them get an education. 

According to the 2007/08 Tanzania HIV/AIDS and Malaria Indicator Survey (THMIS), every fifth Tanzanian girl has no education at all. These are likely to marry and start having babies early as a result. The 2004/05 Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey (TDHS) shows that almost a quarter of all girls between the ages 15-19 are already mothers or have begun childbearing. And 23 percent of all maternal deaths are among young pregnant girls. 

Camfed would like to see this trend reversed. It would like to see more girls in school. Basic Education Statistics in Tanzania (BEST 2010) show that only 18 percent of girls have completed secondary school education. This is why Camfed supports girls from poor families to obtain secondary education and its efforts have seen many go to university.

Camfed works in Zimbabwe, Ghana, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. In Tanzania, Camfed works in four regions of Iringa, Morogoro, Coast and Tanga. It works in ten districts of Handeni, Pangani, Bagamoyo, Rufiji, Kibaha, Morogoro rural, Kilombero, Kilosa, Iringa rural and Kilolo.

Because of poverty, many children in Tanzania are not in school. Some drop out simply because their parents can not meet basic school-going costs. In such circumstances, it’s the girl-child who is likely to miss out on education. In African culture boys are considered more important and therefore given priority when it comes to education.

Camfed works towards ensuring both girls and boys get equal access to education by supporting girls from poor families and orphans to get secondary education. The organisation provides bursary support to girls in 193 secondary schools which covers school fees and other related costs such as pocket money, uniform and accommodation among others.  

Camfed also runs a Safety Net Fund (SNF) for both primary and secondary school children whose objective is to keep them in school. A total of 351 primary schools benefit from the support which covers both boys and girls.

According to Fatina Kiluvia, Camfed’s Impact Manager, the organisation which was officially registerd in Tanzania in 2006 sends money to the schools for the purchase of scholastic materials for the needy children. 

In both projects, teachers, school committees and community members are involved in identifying those who deserve the support.
Teacher mentors take up the responsibility of providing the required materials as well as psychosocial support to ensure the beneficiaries remain in school. 

“We started our operations in Iringa and have been expanding ever since. The plan is to spread our wings to as many places as possible depending on availability of resources,” says Kiluvia.
Camfed started with areas where girls were at higher risk of dropping out due to either poverty or cultural reasons.

In Iringa for example, girls drop out of school to work as maids in the city. In Coast region, when girls reach puberty, they are normally taken out of school for initiation which sees them miss classes for long periods and subsequently get married. 

Camfed’s Director of Operations and Finance, Msaada Balula says Camfed’s intervention has seen girls who would have otherwise never have gone beyond primary school go to university. Today some of them have jobs and are helping their families. 
Last year, a total of 6,310 girls received bursary support while 64,227 children benefited from the Safety Net Fund.

However, not all girls under Camfed’s support complete secondary education or pass their final exams. Difficult school circumstances are to blame. These include teacher shortages, shortage or lack of teaching and learning materials as well as long distances to school among others. 
“These are national challenges,” says Balula.

But Camfed never allows these girls to stop there. Some of them get involved in business under Camfed Association (CAMA)’s programme, a peer support network for young women that helps facilitate their transition from school to young adulthood.
Others undergo short courses such as nursing and teaching while some become leaders in their communities.

Balula mentions long distances to schools as one of the challenges when it comes to retaining girls in school. They come across many challenges on the way to school, some which lead to pregnancies.

Ignorance is another challenge. Because they don’t understand the importance of education, some families do not give Camfed the cooperation it requires to ensure girls remain in school.

“Some parents or guardians take the girls out of school to either work as maids or get married. Most of the children we support are orphans and their grandmothers prefer they stay at home to help with house chores,” Balula says.

Kiluvia calls upon government to speed up implementation of its guidelines to allow schoolgirls who get pregnant back in school after they deliver. “We advocate for girls to be given a second chance. Denying them a chance to complete their education is punishing them,” she says.

As a remedy for school pregnancies, Kiluvia says both students and the community should be given access to sexual and reproductive health information. “Many school children don’t have access to this. They are humans and have feelings too. Lack of information is what puts them in trouble. Adults take advantage of this,” Kiluvia says.

She calls upon parents to stop being too authoritative saying; “It doesn’t work this way. We need to change the culture of how we talk to our children.” 

To protect girls from early pregnancies, Camfed gives girls life skills education to build their confidence and help them realize their values.

Some teachers, according to the Camfed officials, dare not teach pupils about sexuality fearing the community’s wrath. 
“We know of teachers who don’t want to teach this because they get reprimanded at church when the children report this to their parents,” says Kiluvia who thinks children need the right information at the right time.

Through its community health outreach programme, Camfed provides basic health information to community members through various community health campaigns. The programme focuses on preventable diseases such as HIV/Aids and other STIs, malaria and family planning among others.

The target groups are women attending health centres, pupils, out of school youths, families and the public at large.
Kiluvia says more needs to be done by the government as far as community sensitization is concerned.