03 November 2009
Ambassador Melanne Verveer Answers Questions on Girls’ Education
U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer responds to questions on girls’ education submitted by America.gov’s Facebook fans.
Question: Look at www.aakewo.com to see what African American women are doing for Kenyan girls and their caregivers. We do this as a cultural reconnection and without [government] funds. [We] set up several libraries last year and supplied girls with sanitary napkins to keep them from missing school each month. — Dawn Mason
Ambassador Verveer: I want to thank Dawn for the work she’s doing. The fact that she’s doing it in Africa is something that we should applaud.
There are NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] to which people contribute that don’t take any kinds of public resources. There is a great variety of NGOs and nonformal NGOs — for example, classes of students in a high school or a grammar school adopt a project.
A lot of religious communities are very active in providing support for a school — for bringing the kinds of resources that Dawn is bringing to this project.
We encourage this. The secretary [Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton] talks about public-private partnerships. She means that we in government can’t do everything. We need civil society to be very active, whether it’s individuals, colleges and universities, the religious community or the business community.
She [Dawn] mentioned sanitary napkins. Girls in so many places don’t have access to these everyday things that we take for granted. And they literally stay out of school a week when they go through this biological process.
There are companies like Procter & Gamble who are coming together with NGOs to provide some of these necessities.
Anybody, no matter your station in life, can participate and make a difference.
Q: We have to respect the women like we respect our mother. No discrimination, but the women have to know their responsibilities as mother for their children and [as] wife. — Tgk. Hanief
A: We know that educating a girl is the single best investment that can be made. An educated woman will be a better mother. First, she will postpone marriage until an appropriate age.
She will provide better nutrition for her children. Mothers are the first teachers of their children.
Education provides the greatest possibility for gaining a good income. There is a statistic that for every year a girl is in school, her income potential is enhanced by 10 to 20 percent.
The byproducts of an education are not to be underestimated — whether it’s for the benefits to the family, the benefits to the girl being educated, the benefits to her community or the benefits to her country.
Education is truly fundamental.
Q: What is the [role] of governments and expectations that parents should expect with regards to the education of the girl child in Africa? From your experience in Kenya, what did you find [that is] hindering girl child education? … Africa cannot develop without educated Mothers. — Ikechukwu Felix Ake
A: The questioner is very wise in making a statement about the importance of education.
There are many reasons that girls don’t get educated. One is that the parents don’t see the value of educating the girl. Girls are often viewed as the people who collect the firewood, fetch the water, do all the things in the home.
We need to work with parents to help them understand how much more valuable it is for them to educate their daughters than not to educate their daughters.
We have found that often incentives — something as simple as a bag of flour — can benefit the family and help them send a daughter to school. Or a large can of oil. Or not having fees for school, because parents can’t afford to pay. Or book fees. Or uniform fees. All of these things are costs, which are impediments for parents.
A meal in school often is the magnet that entices parents to send their daughter or son to school. Governments need to provide these incentives.
We need to make sure that governments understand the correlation between educating children and the country’s prosperity. In so many of these places you see schools of one room with several grades, literally almost 100 children packed in.
We have to upgrade the quality of the teaching and learning.
We need to find ways to keep girls — who often are victims — safe in school. Parents are afraid that their daughters are going to be harmed in school because terrible things happen, in terms of violence. Parents need to know their children can be safe going to and leaving school.
Q: We must care about them, they are life and a lot more [be]cause they are also human being[s]. — Kadek Yoga
A: He is right. It goes back to violence. To education. Fundamentally it’s respect. It’s appreciating that women’s rights and girls’ rights are human rights.
A group of girls in Africa told me how every minute of their lives, they worry about violence that they could experience — in their homes, in their schools, walking — and what they had to do to understand how they could protect themselves.
We need to give girls mentors in their lives to be there for them.
Mr. Yoga is exactly right — every girl has the same rights as boys. But, a lot of people don’t share his view. And we have to work to turn that around.
