Fiona Muchembere joined global leaders, including President Carter, Jeff Skoll and Al Gore and at the Skoll World Forum at Oxford University from March 26 to 28. As the first girl from her rural community in Zimbabwe to attend university as well as the first to become a lawyer, Fiona was able to share with the audience her experience of breaking through the barriers of poverty to set a new precedent for children and young people in rural communities. Fiona was supported through her education by Camfed, and today she holds a managerial position supporting Cama (Camfed’s growing alumnae organization) across four countries of Africa.

Fiona challenged the idea that girls’ exclusion from education is an expression of culture. “In Africa we value education,” Fiona told her audience and fellow panelists. “Families are proud of their children – both boys and girls –who receive further education, especially in the rural areas. But the context of chronic poverty and AIDS has masked this cultural value.” Fiona described how the economic crisis in Zimbabwe is making it increasingly difficult for families to be able to afford to send their girls to school. As education costs rise, more and more girls are dropping out of school and migrating to urban areas or neighbouring countries where they are vulnerable to sexual exploitation or abuse which can lead to HIV/AIDS.

“Poverty is robbing children of the right to education despite the high value it has within our culture,” she continued. Fiona is supporting 22 members of her immediate and extended family through school. Consequently, she and other educated young women in Zimbabwe are increasingly regarded as leaders by their communities. “Our families often ask us, ‘You are the ones that went to school–what should we do in this situation?’” she said.

With Fiona and her fellow Cama members sending almost 50,000 girls to school this year, a growing number of young women in rural Africa will be able to answer that question with confidence.

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By Vicky Anning, writer-in-residence

When the writer Lisa Grainger was growing up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), she loved nothing better than listening to the tales told by her nanny, Ida, round the fire. Twenty years later, she gave up a full-time job as the Features Director of Elle to return to her native Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries to gather stories that have been passed down by generations of grandmas (or “gogos”). (more…)

Camfed founder and executive director Ann Cotton is among a group of leaders in international development who were invited to contribute to the UN Chronicle’s current issue assessing the world’s progress on achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Read her article on the importance of educating girls and women at the UN Chronicle’s website.

By Yakubu Memuna and Yahaya Huzeifa

“My husband looked at me as if I were a stranger and said, ‘Why should an illiterate woman like you be my wife? Go back to where you came from.’” I was 12 years old when my father decided to pull me out of school and give me up for marriage to the son of one of his friends. In marrying me off, he knew that he would receive a bride price, and that he would no longer be financially responsible for me.

My grandmother took me to a different community in an effort to protect me. For two years, all of my family members tried to convince my father that I was too young to marry, but my father married me off anyway, at the age of 14.

Within five years, I gave birth to three children. When I was 20 years old, my husband took a second wife, leaving me and my children to fend for ourselves. My children were ages two, three, and five. (more…)

This short film features Mgata, a teacher-mentor in a school in rural Tanzania who sees it as her mission to help any girl who is on the verge of dropping out of school. Her goal: to provide them with social and financial support, enabling them to finish school and become leaders in their community. (more…)

Walter Turner, the host of KPFA Radio’s “Africa Today”, talks to Fiona Muchembere, one of Camfed’s first beneficiaries, about the manifold benefits of educating girls in rural Africa, and about the problems that arise for girls who are deprived of an education. Click on the play control below to listen to the interview.