Our Mission
The Issue
In developing countries, more than 77 million children ages 6 to 12 are out of school, and 57% of them are girls. Meanwhile, over 150 million children in the developing world start school but do not complete five years, the minimum required for basic literacy. We aim to directly address the devaluation of girls’ education in Tanzania. In this way, we hope to improve the perceptions of the Ifakaran community towards its women.
Our mission is to assist girls, who face both gender-based and economic injustices, in realizing their potential and living dignified and self-reliant lives. We are focusing particularly on providing education, re-establishing self-confidence and enabling self-empowerment in young women and young mothers, many of whom are forced with disrespect and stigmatization from their community, and even within their families.
To date, only 5% of the Tanzanian female population is attending secondary school, and only a very small minority of this 5% comes from low socio-economic backgrounds. With the Tanzanian national poverty rate being 41.6% it is difficult to imagine the lives of the millions of girls who are denied access to schooling.
The Impact
Education breeds empowerment. By educating young women and helping them establish a feeling of self-worth, we hope to reduce the number of girls that are marginalized and degraded in the Tanzanian society. The school will inspire girls to take leading roles in politics, economics, mathematics and the arts. The empowered girls educated at the Bakhita School will become voices for African women who do not have the privilege or the capacity to speak for themselves. The Bakhita School will create a new generation of women who are not afraid to think outside of the box and to create positive change for themselves and for their country.
Obviously, women constitute about half of our planet’s population. It is only through empowering them –educating them, allowing them into matters of development, enabling their self-confidence and facilitating their self-expression – that we can ensure that they will become part of the solution. Women have to become part of our planet’s solution to things like poverty, economic development, disease, population control etc. Education, along with economic opportunity, can truly be transformative. Globally transformative.
