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If you walked into a classroom in almost every country of Africa and you asked the boys to
stand up, and the girls to stand up in the early primary school years, you would find
more or less a balance in enrollment.
But as you go on, you will find that the dropout of girls rises, and girls become a smaller
and smaller minority. And it's tragic to look at those little girls and realize their desire
for education. They sit and learn in classrooms where they hang on teacher's every word, and
yet you know that they're not going to be able to continue. My name's Ann Cotton
and in 1990, I first went to Africa, to Zimbabwe, to look at the problems of girls' access to
education, and what I found surprised and shocked me, and I became an activist. I walked
from village to village with an interpreter listening to people's views about girls education.
And I had expected to hear that they didn't want their daughters' education because they
wanted them to be working in the fields, or they wanted them to be married young. And
consistently I heard the message from parents, from teachers, from the local chief, that
girls' education was desired. The problem was one of poverty.
In Zimbabwe, I met Judith Camire, an incredibly inspiring head teacher.
When Ann first came, I thought it was a great opportunity because I had problems which I
could not solve on my own. Girls were dropping out of school and in a classroom, in a class
about 23 boys, you'd find there would only be 3 girls . But getting to the community,
the place where women were supposed to be was home and I really thought there was something
wrong, because a school is meant for both the boy and the girl.
So the coming in of them enabled me to discuss with them as to how best we could solve that
problem.
Poor parents want as much for their children as every other parent as I want for my children.
They just don't have the means to provide it.
And so in 1993 I founded Camfed, the Campaign for Female Education to support the education
of girls in Africa.
One of the the young women we've met is Frieda and her circumstances are very, very difficult.
She lost both her parents to AIDS and yet, she has taken up the reigns of her family.
She is not only supporting her own brothers and sisters, but she's also supporting the
children of her brother who also died of AIDS and his wife. She has become the only bread
winner in that family We provided a micro-loan for Frieda, and with it she started a flower-selling
business.
She's been able to bank money in a fixed interest deposit account. She is probably the first
woman in her family ever to have a bank account, and she has saved to the extent that she can
now afford only to work part time in her business, and to come back to school.
So as she has returned to education because she understands the value of education and
so not only is she the mother, to four children, she's also a scholar.
Elizabeth dropped out of education. Her mother didn't have the means to pay for a new school
uniform or the fees .
She would have faced a life where she had married young, had her children when she was
still an adolescent, and probably, the whole poverty cycle again would have begun. The
Camfed program is now supporting her education.
It's not hand to mouth anymore. It's real and the support is guaranteed continuous and
so, with that security Elizabeth now has, she absolutely brought them. She's doing incredibly
well academically, and she's been chosen as the head girl of the school.
Abigail comes from a typical poor background, she's lost her parents and that is a common
experience of many
of this generation of adolescence.
And indeed of children on sub-Saharan Africa.
She lives with her grandmother and in spite of her absolute care and concern for Abigail,
there was no way she could earn enough to send Abigail to school.
We are supporting over 72,000 girls in education. We're now working with over a thousand schools
in some of the hardest-to -reach places.
In the 21st century all girls should be in school, because that's justice. And beyond
the justice, the benefits of girls' education are extraordinary.
It has not been realized, that the investment in girls education is the best investment,
the country can make.
In fact, it's the best investment, the best investment that the world can make, because
the dividends are enormous.
They will be the first generation through school and so they are the role-models.
And coming out of school they have aspirations.
They are now aspiring to be doctors, to be lawyers, to have their own businesses and
to become social entrepreneurs, to be part of the development of the social fabric of
their communities. Nothing would make me happier.
Then, that tomorrow Kathrine became redundant, when every child in Africa, and throughout
the world of the chance that they deserve and we won't be needed, because they will
change the world.
They will make sure that the next generation is not bought into poverty.
And when they succeed with our help, then we can watch them transform in our communities.
We can watch them transform our world. We can stand back and admire the view.