The Project Begins! Inspiration to Reality

 The Niamakoro Education Center project was inspired by my Fall 2009 semester in Mali through SIT and by this photo:

This is a 7th grader at the Niamakoro Community School filling out her survey for my independent study project on girls and education in Bamako. In Mali a literate 12-year-old girl who is still pursuing her education is an extremely rare phenomenon. My independent study project showed me that this is still true even in Bamako where the gender inequity in education is supposedly solved.


My experience in Bamako was one of the greatest of my life and it could not have been so without the many amazing people who cared for me and introduced me to their homes and their lives. These connections, combined with my outrage at the lack of educational resources available to children, especially girls, in Mali made me want to go back and try to  contribute something to Bamako.


I firmly believe that the people in the best position to start solving the problems facing periurban Malian communities, or indeed any community, are the members of the community themselves. I am lucky to have many intelligent and educated friends from Niamakoro and this project arose from an ongoing conversation with one of them, Moussa Coulibaly. When asked what he would do to improve the educational future of girls in Niamakoro, Moussa said he would build a library, and so the grant writing process began.


Now, funded by the Davis Peace Project and armed with over 200 books generously donated by everyone from French professors at Scripps College to classmates, we are preparing to leave for Bamako. We will arrive on Friday, September 9th and will update this blog as the project finally takes concrete form. We can't wait to get started!