When I learned about the Friends of Guéoul, one of my first questions was “why girls and not boys?”. It took a while to appreciate the reasoning behind this.
In Sénégal, as in all too many parts of the world, girls and women get the short end of the stick in so many ways. For the poorest families in a village like Gueoul, this means that what limited resources there are for education go first to boys, and second to girls. All too often, girls may get only a few years of education, before their value as an economic resource to their impoverished family results in their being pressed into service as a domestic servant, or working in the fields, or forced into marriage at an appallingly young age. In fact, despite the best efforts of the Friends of Gueoul, two of “our girls” have been withdrawn from school and married, at the ages of 12 and 13.
Sadly, the playing field has been tilted against girls for millennia, with only recent signs of change. Our modest efforts can only push it back towards fairness a little bit.
In addition, study after study has shown that when spending money to improve the well-being of the residents of struggling societies, educating girls is one of the most effective things you can do, more so than educating boys. There is an old saying that when you educate a girl, you educate not only the woman that she becomes, but her children and her village as well. As a man, I am chagrined to hear this, but I have to recognize the facts for what they are.