[Oe List ...] Does any one know Ann Cotton or Camfed?

[Ann Shafer]

I received a link to this New York Times article about Camfed that supports
education of girls and women in Africa. I wonder if anyone knows of Camfed
or Ann Cotton who started it. Here is the article:

 

  _____  

March 7, 2012, 1:00 am


Africa's Girl Power

By DAVID BORNSTEIN
<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/david-bornstein/> 

Fixes

Fixes <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/fixes/>  looks at
solutions to social problems and why they work.


Tags:


Africa <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/africa/> , Children and
Childhood <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/children-and-childhood/>
, Children and Youth
<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/children-and-youth/> , Education
<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/education/> , Education (K-12)
<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/education-k-12/> , Rural Areas
<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/rural-areas/> , Teachers and
School Employees
<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/teachers-and-school-employees/> ,
Women and Girls <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/women-and-girls/>


On Thursday, thousands of organizations around the world will celebrate
International Women's Day, acknowledging women's achievements and drawing
attention to their continuing struggles. (See some events here
<http://joinmeonthebridge.org/events> .)

Thinking about the day, I was reminded of a woman named Fiona Mavhinga, whom
I met at a conference a few years ago and who works for a remarkable
organization called Camfed
<http://us.camfed.org/site/PageServer?pagename=home_index> , which supports
girls' education in Africa.

Many believe that the most powerful way to bring lasting social change to a
country is to educate its girls.

Mavhinga grew up in a rural district of Zimbabwe called Wedza, about 80
miles south of Harare, the capital. She spent most of her childhood living
with her grandmother because the closest primary school was only three miles
away, a walkable distance for a young girl. (The closest school was twice
that distance from her parents' home.) When she was 13, her father lost his
job and had to cut back his support for her education. To remain in school,
Mavhinga had to earn money to pay for fees, clothes, books, pens and
paraffin. She sold vegetables with her grandmother before and after school,
beginning at 4 a.m. and ending around dinner. "I didn't have any time to do
homework during the day," she recalled. "I had to be at the market, then
cook dinner, and wash up and do all the other house chores which girls are
expected to help with."

Fiona MavhingaMark ReadFiona Mavhinga, who received help from Camfed as a
girl, now supports the education of children in Zimbabwe. 

At night, she studied by candlelight. She did well and completed high
school, but her education would have ended there if not for support from
Camfed, which allowed her to attend the University of Zimbabwe, where she
graduated in law. When I met her, she told me she was supporting the
education of 22 children in Zimbabwe - 14 girls and 8 boys.

I was amazed and humbled. But I later discovered that this devotion to
education was not unusual for Camfed alumni - or for the tens of thousands
of villagers that Camfed has touched.

Camfed (the Campaign for Female Education) was founded in 1993 by a Welsh
social entrepreneur named Ann Cotton, who began by raising money at her
kitchen table to send 32 girls from poor families in Zimbabwe to school.
Today, the organization works with 3,667 schools in rural parts of Zimbabwe,
Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana and Malawi, and has provided direct support for more
than half a million children to attend primary school. Camfed has also
provided grants to enable 60,000 girls to complete secondary school,
supported 15,000 more who attend university or receive business training,
and provided financing for 8,000 of their enterprises. 

In recent years, leaders in the field of international development have come
to agree that the most powerful way to bring lasting social benefits to a
country is to expand educational and economic opportunities for girls. What
has become known as the Girl Effect <http://www.girleffect.org/question>  is
dramatic: A girl who doesn't attend school or marries young, for example, is
at far greater risk of dying in childbirth, contracting H.I.V., being beaten
by her husband, bearing more children than she would like, and remaining in
poverty, along with her family. By contrast, an educated girl is more likely
to earn higher wages, delay childbirth, and have fewer, healthier children
who are themselves more likely to attend school, prosper, and participate in
democratic processes. (pdf
<http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1099079877269
/547664-1099080014368/DID_Girls_edu.pdf> )

Camfed's support can alter the course of a child's life. Most of the
students it assists come from extremely poor families. Some cannot afford
shoes. Many are orphans. All are selected for support by village-based
school management committees - not by Camfed, nor by local teachers acting
alone (who often have personal biases). The committees must make their
decisions public, maintain open books, and allocate Camfed's support based
on demonstrated need. (Corruption is widespread in many African countries.
Camfed tracks its funds meticulously and maintains a culture of
transparency.)

What's most instructive, and innovative, about Camfed, however, is not how
it channels assistance to vulnerable students in remote areas, but how it
catalyzes broader changes, eliciting leadership from more than 90,000 people
in thousands of villages - including parents, teachers, local leaders and,
especially, the women in its alumni network, known as Cama.

Cama was started in 1998 by the first 400 women who received Camfed's
support through secondary school. They were confronted with the question,
what to do next? They saw that an alumni association could not only help
members start businesses, explore job opportunities and deal with the social
obstacles women faced, but could provide mentors to encourage the next
generation of girls. In rural areas, schools don't provide career guidance.
How do young girls hear about opportunities? How do they come to envision a
better future?

Cama is responding to these challenges. It has grown into a force for social
change. The association now boasts 17,600 members - there will be tens of
thousands more in coming years - and they all go through a four-month
probationary period to demonstrate commitment to girls' empowerment. In
Zimbabwe, Cama members are district coordinators, businesswomen, government
officials, leaders of nongovernmental oranizations, full-time teachers and
doctors. "These women understand the transformative power of education
because they've experienced it themselves," Ann Cotton explained. "And
because they understand what it means to have been poor, they have a strong
sense of empathy. The way they relate to children and others in their
communities is profoundly respectful. It leads to thousands of small actions
that, cumulatively, create something extremely powerful."

A family in the Nyaminyami district of Zimbabwe.Mark ReadA family in the
Nyaminyami district of Zimbabwe.

Cama members support one another at university, for example, where other
students typically come from wealthier families. (This works like the Posse
Foundation that Tina Rosenberg recently wrote about in Fixes
<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/beyond-sats-finding-success
-in-numbers/> .) Mavhinga recalled that the five Cama students at her
university shared everything, including one purple, sleeveless dress that
belonged to one of them. "We all wore it," she recalled. "So you could just
feel decent and confident when you're going into class."

Today, Cama members provide moral support and guidance to vulnerable
children, particularly those without parents. They sit on thousands of local
school-management committees. They speak to community leaders about ending
the traditional practice of enforced marriage. And they engage in
philanthropy - lots of it - having provided educational support to 166,000
children - an average of 9 per member.

With only 133 full-time employees, Camfed is improving the educational
environment for two million children, whose schools can now offer meals to
needy students and extra lessons in science or math, and have access to
additional sports and teaching resources. 

Camfed has succeeded by eschewing the usual strategy of international
development organizations. Rather than focusing on what its staff can do for
others, it focuses on what its staff can help others do for their own
communities. And the results ripple out in surprising ways.

Consider the Pepukai Mother Support Group, in the Chiredzi District of
Zimbabwe. Most of the two dozen mothers and grandmothers in this group never
attended school themselves, but they are committed to ensuring that children
in their community, especially the girls, do. The mothers bake bread, weave
mats, raise goats and chicks, and grow vegetables - and use the profits to
pay for school fees, uniforms, food and school supplies to send 11 children,
including 7 adolescent girls, to school.

The Pepukai group is one of more than 2,500 parent support groups that have
been galvanized and seeded by Camfed with small sums of money (in this case
$100) and large measures of training and encouragement, including exchanges
with groups from other regions and countries. In 2011, more than 48,000
children received educational support through local philanthropic
initiatives like this. Some communities have created Father Support Groups,
which have done things like build girls' hostels.


Related


More From Fixes <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/fixes> 


Read previous contributions to this series.

What makes this all work is a culture of listening. When a Camfed
representative enters a community, villagers expect the person to start
issuing directions. But the staff member begins by asking local residents:
What do you think the problems are? What could be done? People are caught
off guard. They are not used to being asked what they think.

Turning people's ideas into action takes institutions. Camfed is not about
setting up its own institutions - it has only one office in each country -
it's about helping others to do so. For example, it has organized 86
volunteer community development committees, which comprise district
educational leaders, head teachers, police officers, health workers, parents
and members of Cama. At least half their members must be women. These
development committees assist 3,500 School Management Committees, which
comprise a school administrator, a female teacher mentor, groups of parents,
a representative of the village chief, and, again, a Cama alumna. Camfed
calls the people who sit on these committees "volunteer activists." They are
not paid. They get to make real decisions, deploy real money, and solve real
problems. They get the satisfaction and mutual respect that comes from
working with others to transform lives.

Camfed's highest priority is child protection. In Africa, it is common for
girls to be pressured by teachers into having sex. (More than a third of
Cama members surveyed said that a girl who refused a teacher's proposition
would face punishment.) There are other issues that come up: teachers,
parents and students who still believe it is legal to use corporal
punishment (it isn't), orphans facing bereavement, students getting sick,
families facing economic crises, which can force children to drop out.

Every Camfed partner school has at least one female teacher mentor who is
responsible for attending to these concerns, and if necessary reporting
problems or abuses to the committees or Camfed's national office. More than
1,500 schools have established child protection policies. (In Zambia, the
government has adopted the child protection policy advanced by Camfed.)
"Institutions have the responsibility to create every possible layer of
protection around children, which includes encouraging them to speak out and
providing access to adults whom they can trust," explains Cotton. Schools
can draw upon Camfed's Safety Net Fund, which remains at their discretion.
Last year, Camfed reports that 276,000 children were assisted. The
organization reports that in areas where it works, dropouts as a result of
pregnancy and other causes have fallen, and adults are more likely to report
incidents of abuse to authorities.

"People in rural communities have a lot of potential," Mavhinga said. "But
poverty is standing in their way." When we think about poverty, however,
there is a tendency to think in material terms - and to try to solve it in
purely material terms. That leads to the mistake that many organizations
make - leaving no space for growth from the communities they serve. There is
a way to spend money that induces dependency and a way to do it that enables
human development. Camfed illustrates the difference.

"Once you create an environment in which people can see that you really mean
it when you say you're listening and you're there to support their
initiatives," says Cotton, "then you get something very profoundly
inspiring. You see the breadth and depth of human endeavor and initiative -
that's the greatest resource we have, after all."

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20120307/5295297f/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1420 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20120307/5295297f/attachment-0003.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 38805 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20120307/5295297f/attachment-0004.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 36818 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/oe_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20120307/5295297f/attachment-0005.jpg>