Friends of Gueoul

The arid sandy plains of Senegal are stark contrast to much of the United States. Plants and water are next to nonexistent, and in the dry season the sandy dust turns the air bronze. Life here is tough. In the small villages that skirt the highway from Dakar to Mauritania, hardscrabble subsistence farming and tiny one-man (or more likely one-woman) businesses sell the small amounts of produce or basic goods that people here can afford. Per capita income in Senegal is two dollars a day, but out here along the highway, away from the relative affluence of Dakar, it’s a whole lot less. For those families at the bottom of the Senegalese economic ladder, it’s nearly nothing. In a bad year, like the locust plague of 2003-04, these folks would have died of starvation without the help of industrial nations.

Guéoul is one of those villages. Its cluster of cement block houses and traditional millet stalk huts straddle the highway a half-hour south of Louga, three hours north of Dakar. At night, Guéoul is a dark place – there are few street lights, and few of the houses have electricity. Just off of the highway is the main drag, a sandy street that is the business district – here, a stall that sells cloth, next to it a tailor to sew it on an ancient sewing machine, across the street a woman selling balls of sweet dough deep-fried in a little kettle, and a miniscule grocery stall selling tomatoes or cigarettes one at a time; and lots of women sitting on small stools or the ground, vegetables spread out in front of them in baskets or on blankets. By local standards, some of these businesses are doing well. A few families are prosperous, particularly those with a son working in Europe and sending money home. But Guéoul, like every other Senegalese village, is predominently poor.

Life on the edge makes for a lot of hard choices. One of the choices facing the poor families of Guéoul is what to do with their young daughters. They can keep them in school, paying the fees, paying for books, paying to feed them. Or, they can hire them out to wash all the clothes by hand for a more affluent family. Or, they can marry them off at age twelve to fourteen. One less mouth to feed, and every franc not spent on school is one more franc for food. Those girls married too young are bearing children while their own body is still immature, sometimes with drastic consequences to their health (fistulas and incontinence) or even their death or the death of their baby.

That has consequences, of course. The literacy rate in the past in Senegal was only thirty to forty percent. Among the rural poor, particularly women, it was 25% or less.. Literate may mean having only a sixth grade education. Being denied schooling and married off that young condemns a woman to unempowered poverty. Collectively, the situation perpetuates itself. More life on the edge, more young girls married off, more illiteracy, more poverty.

Why don’t the people of Guéoul do something about this? They’re certainly a community-oriented bunch – you can’t walk down to the market square without exchanging greetings and pleasantries with virtually every person you pass. This is, in the words of local teacher Mbaye Samb, “an obligation.” Extended families live in communal compounds, with grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and others sharing a house, food and other resources. And they’re generous to a fault with guests – heaven forbid that a guest should not have enough to eat, regardless of the economic straits of his host.

The answer is simple – money. A prosperous man in Guéoul has a house with maybe some electricity for a light at night, and his family is eating well and he can keep his children in school, that’s prosperity. In the unlikely event that there’s is anything left, it’s absorbed by obligations to that extended family.

Regardless of good intentions, there’s no money left to help non-relatives.

How much money are we talking about here? Not much. In a country where the per capita income is two dollars a day, you can fix a lot of problems with a hundred dollars. That hundred dollars will pay for a girl’s school fees, books and supplies for a year, along with a set of decent clothes to wear to school. After all of that is said and done, there’ll be enough left to buy some food for her family – enough food to justify the family’s keeping that girl in school. That’s a lot of bang for a hundred bucks.

Where is the hundred bucks going to come from if nobody in Guéoul has it? Enter Friends of Guéoul, Inc. Friends of Guéoul is a non-profit corporation based in Denver, Colorado. Since 2005, Friends of Guéoul has tackled the issues facing the poorest girls in Guéoul, with a simple goal – keep them in school, help them succeed academically, give them a chance to do something with their lives. The plan is equally simple – give them a scholarship for the hundred bucks they need to stay in school and stay fed. This winter, Friends of Guéoul added a tutoring program for all its girls in elementary school.

And it works. Friends of Guéoul has watched its first class of girls progress through several years of school, and the stories are compelling. Consider Ndeye Fatou and the BFEM examination: Passing the BFEM and obtaining its certificate is a qualification for a job. A girl may go on to finish her last 3 years of high school (lycee) if she has good grades. These girls sometimes succeed in passing the final exam at the end of high school and obtain their Baccalaureate (BAC) which qualifies to go to university. Last three of them were at the University.

Ndeye took the BFEM exam the year she first got our scholarship, 4 years ago – and failed it. She continued on in school, and took it the next year – and failed it. She continued on in school, and on her third try, she passed it. When asked how she found the courage to keep trying, she said emphatically that the annual scholarship made it possible. Both her mother and father have no education at all. The scholarship provided the incentives and resources to make this happen, and for Ndeye Fatou and her family, it’s an extraordinary change in their fortunes and in their status.

How does Friends of Guéoul manage to make sure the money goes where it is needed, and not in unintended pockets? For one thing, Guéoul is like small towns anywhere – everybody knows everybody else’s business. Mbaye Samb, the teacher, is the point man in Guéoul. He consults with a local group composed of teachers, community elders and others who identify the girls most needing assistance who will enter the first grade. It’s public knowledge who’s getting a scholarship, and the scholarships are awarded every year in a very public – and very heavily attended — ceremony, accompanied by much florid speechifying about the importance of education by all of the local dignitaries and movers and shakers. The February 2008 scholarship awards were even broadcast on national television! Nothing happens behind closed doors.

But there’s more – Friends of Guéoul doesn’t just send a check to Senegal and forget about it. Director Judy Beggs has ties to Guéoul that go back to a Peace Corps stint twenty years ago. Board member Abdou N’Dir was born there and lived there until he came to the States in 1995. Five of our Board have been to Guéoul. They know Mbaye, and they know Guéoul. The members of Friends of Gueoul visit Gueoul regularly. The books are monitored. Judy goes there each winter and visits with teachers and school administrators. This past winter, she visited some 60 girls in their homes and classrooms and met their families, teachers, and school administrators. Between visits, Friends of Guéoul receives regular reports on the girls, their progress, and the expenditure of funds. There’s a lot of goodwill and a lot of friendship, but there’s also a lot of accountability. It’s a potent and highly effective combination.

Friends of Guéoul funds the education of twelve girls in each incoming first-grade class and provides scholarships each year they stay in school. This program, at its peak, will provide educational opportunities for 160 girls each year. Most will eventually graduate and receive their certificates. But that’s not the end. Bit by bit, that education that the girls have won will turn into empowerment and economic advancement. Some will go on to university; others will open businesses. The road is a long one, and they’ve only started, but these girls have tools and opportunities available to them that most could not even have dreamed of a few years ago.

The story doesn’t stop with the girls, either. A computer teaching lab has been opened – for all students, and even adults — and ultimately a cybercafé for the village. Gueoul is now connected to the world. Friends of Guéoul is also on a long road, but it’s come a long way from the day a few friends scrounged together a thousand dollars for the first class of girls. Twenty-five computers were donated for the computer lab. There’s also a collaboration with a Small Enterprise Development Peace Corps volunteer who will teach entrepreneurship and business to interested teenagers and adults of Gueoul. This Volunteer will also collaborate with Friends of Guéoul in the village.

It’s an amazing story to watch unfold. But it’s even more amazing because it doesn’t need a big bureaucracy, or a government agency, or millions of dollars and years of studies. There is no global aim, just a village. Projects like ours – narrow in focus and reasonably assigned – are the best way to accomplish immediate, profound, and lasting results. Your donation provides powerful leverage.