Setbacks: Girls' Exclusion from Education is Solvable

at home, whatever the reasons. It's estimated that there are currently more than fifty million girls who've left school before receiving their high school diplomas. Those who do manage to complete their schooling usually have more support from their families and communities. And I remember feeling very guilt and very tone that I had gotten the chance that they also you know, needed. But you know, I think some people call it survive and guilt, but it's just as the

heartbreaking patrol feed. When Angelie Murramirawa was a young girl in rural Zimbabwe, she was nominated by her community to receive additional support for her education. That support proved essential for her success. She now helps to run the nonprofit that helped her. The campaign for female education. It works to keep girls in school across the African continent. Universal quality education is a human right and one of the

UN's Sustainable Development goals. It's understood to be a basic requirement for any country that hopes to flourish, and it's a goal that the world's nations had been getting closer to achieving. Between the years two thousand and twenty eighteen, primary school completion rates rose from seventy percent to eighty four percent globally, and before the pandemic arrived, it was expected that nearly ninety percent of all school aged children would be able to complete primary school by the year

twenty thirty. As part of Solvable Setback series, we're talking with leaders around the world about the pandemic and how to get goals like universal education back on track. COVID has been very, very brutal, but Mura Mirwa sees COVID nineteen not only as a setback, but also as an opportunity. If we have land, we should actually be able to expedite our solutions to the crisis that we face. This should actually move us a head faster because we have land.

My name is Angeline Angie. I'm the executive director for Comfort. Our work as Comfort solves the problem of girls exclusion from education. Angie, thanks so much for joining us today. Just to get started, could you describe the gap in women's in girls' education in Africa? Well, the figures that we have got that our official so far and from UNESCO, is that before COVID we had over fifty two million

girls were out of school in Subside and Africa. We're very focused right now on the question of problems that we're getting better and that have gone into reverse because of the global pandemic. And I wonder what impact COVID nineteen has had on girls education. I know that in Africa in many countries the numbers are much better than they've been in many places in the development world. But I assume that there are also different kinds of second

order effects. So what impact has the pandemic had. COVID has been very, very brutal. And yes, it's true that you know in Africa we had dead improvements in terms of access to primary education for most children. But what is COVID done is started eroding the gains that have been met in that space as family started losing income. We're not even talking about you know, the school closure,

the prolonged school closure. So as much as our online learning was introduced as a response by most governments, it was amazing and awesome for the children that could access it and afforded, but it also meant that for the majority of the children that we work with as an organization were in the hardest to rich communities, they did not get support with online learning. So as a result of it, I know, Prefect that you know, our alumni

network are supported with printed out materials. They were doing social distance study groups and all that. But you know, it is the duty of the government to also ensure that our quality education is provided to every child. But COVID actually exposed that we have issues of equity, you know,

informed by technology, you know, access for various sermitis. So yes, just to say that unfortunately COVID is exacerbated the inequality in Africa, particularly in education on boys and girls, but also on those that could afford it and those that can't. Also on urban and rural Have schools been closed in many countries in Africa? What does the picture look like? They're with actually the basic question of whether children are going to school. The majority of African countries closed schools

at the onset of COVID. That was last year and right now schools are opened at least another for effect across five African countries and Babo, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania and Ghana. But then it's heartbreaking to see what COVID has done. We have a situations where we've seen most girls, particularly now having to take up more household shoes than they were doing before the pandemic. But we've also seen a lot of children actually take up work in order to

sustain their families. And will say work, we're talking about working in other people's working in cultural labor because you know, because of restrictions, markets were closed, family income fail, so we had children stepping in to sustain families or bassets. This is even where so child headed families where you've got often the older child taking care of the rest of the family, or where there are grandparents he headed our families where the grandparents are too all themselves to

fend for the children. So you have children we've had to work to be able to sustain themselves. Unfortunately, that also goals with issues of you know, transactional sets or you know like girls being taken advantage of in exchange for food and all that. So those have been there. You know, some of the exacerbated crisis are due to COVID and this is mainly because of the response to

COVID where restrictions were put to care the spread. Discrimination against girls takes different forms obviously in different parts of Africa and North Africa versus West Africa, Central Africa. The opposite of school for girls in Africa is often increased poverty, full time work and child marriage. That's another way to look at the statistics about what's happening. Where is the problem the worst and where are you seeing the greatest progress?

If you know, the issue of girls exclusion, like you said, it takes so many forms. There's exclusion from education totally, you know, like where girls not in school, but there's also exclusion within the system where girls do not have the academic self esteem to participate, where girls do not have the confidence to be able to participate. So from our stities as an organization, academic self esteem is the second highest after poverty in terms of girls participation in school.

And I think you know that Africa there's huge challenges of child marriage. But we actually you know discovered that actually child marriage is not the reason why girls are not in school. It's actually every sort of girls not being in school. So when girls are in school, they are least likely to be married because they are in school, and also it addresses issues of adolescent pregnancy. The statistics have continued to show that that education actually protects girls.

So I just want to be able to point out that it is important for us to continue to be newest and responsive to children in each context, rather than probably over generalizing, because like you rightly say, they are varying levels and magnitude of the problem in each context and from each country. That's the tragedy of it. Camp FED is the campaign for Female Education your organization. Can you tell me a little bit about how camp FED

works and what it does. I love comfort, and just just to say that I'm actually one of the very first girls supported by Camford through school and Comfort supported me at a time in my life when I was about to drop out of school. I was transitioning from primary to secondary school. So I know comfored quite intimately. So what comfort does is it supposed families without their

financial means to support their children through school. So we meet our old school going course we're talking about it is a stationary pencils pans, sanitarywhere and where children have to travel long distances. We also support them with that. But the most important thing that I want to be able to share here is that comfort response to each and every individual child's barriers to education and works with

the community to be able to add raise that. So today CONFID is supported over four point eight million children to go to school across Africa. So tell me a little more about your story. You said when you were finishing primary school it wasn't given that you were going to stay in school. Is that right? And was that when Camford began to support you? Sure? So okay, let me just give you a bit of background on me. I went on the first born in a family of

you know, five children, So I went through Zimbabwe. I'm sorry, just to start even further back, yes, yeah, I'll start from there. So I was born in I grew up in a grew of village in Zimbabwe Court then theres the southeast part of a which is the capital city. As I went through primary school, I had to work you know, in other people's seals. But also I remember really watching people's dishes, so such basic things as pencils

and exercise books. And when I received my primary school leaving certificate, I had the best possible results in the country. But as young as I was at that time, I knew that there was no way my parents could afford the cost of secondary school because come on, you're starting from just doing four subjects at primary. At secondary school were doing like over nine subjects. You needed more books, more pens to write in, you needed more discent clothes.

And I was getting older as well. So that's that's at the point when I knew that I there was no way mine reselves, We're just not enough to get me to secondary school. So that's when CANFID was also starting to wake in my community and I was selected for support and CONFID started supporting me at that time to secondary school. And what did that support consist of?

What else did they provide? I got decent clothes for the first time, imired at a school uniform, which meant that I looked like any other child who was in school. I had not want any new parents of shoes at all. So when we were about to go for shoes sitting, everybody was saying size six, so come on. I also didn't want to embarrass myself, so I just said size six.

Turns out that I was size eight. So those are some of the descent clothes that we talk about about, the showing that even children that are coming from the most disadvantaged families can also participate confidently with them such systems as well. For the first time, I was not worried about being as get to leave the classroom because I had not paid school fees to go home and collect it, because that's the practice if you have not

paid your ask it to go home and collected. I knew that she wasn't never there, so for the first time, I learned without fear. But I just also want to point out that there was a point during that phase in my life where there was a lot of guilt because when I was selected for support, I was one of the girls from my school, so it supported its

twenty one inter secondary school from various schools. But I had, you know, failure colleagues from primary school that did not get the same chance, and I remember feeling very guilt and very tone that I had gotten the chance that they also you know, needed. But you know, I think some people call it Survivor Guild. But it's just as the heart breaking part of fate that when resources are limited and the first you have to select, and which is the crisis that we were facing with COVID right now,

that there's just so much need. It's heart breaking. But I just want to be able to say that the community selected me, and yeah I am. I not only know what it means to be excluded at one point, but I also understand personally and intimately the potential that comes with that and just how much more you can do as an individual and as a collective. What kind of impact has CAMPED had on a village like the

one you grew up in Zimbabwe? Has it supported other girls going to school from that same village and what other sort of effects does that have? So what it is meant is that you know, as we graduate through school, we also are very much anchored and inspired to do

something within our community. So as I speak to you right now, as the first group of young women supported through school by CAMPED, we started what we call the Camford Association, which is a network of young women leaders that are paying it forward literally, So we one hundred seventy eight thousand members now and counting, and each of us, on average suppose three more girls to go to school.

So you ask what has been the impact. The major impact has been, you know, the sustainability through the commitment by former beneficiaries or clients of Comfort to be able to support the next generation of children. So by one graduating, three more are graduating. So that's the phenomenal impact. And you you mentioned this feeling of survivor's guilt, which is quite understandable being someone who was supported in this way and a community where most people don't and most women,

most girls don't have that opportunity. I wonder how people in the community do treat someone in your position, people in your family, people in the place you grew up. Was their envy, pride? What's the reaction to the girls who get this support and prosper and the way you have The beauty of the Comfort model is that it's

very thought through. So just to say from from my part, the fact that the community itself identified me for support meant that there was the sense of ownership and the saints of pride that this is what we have enabled, and that means that girls are celebrated in the community. I can give you multiple examples where community members they have stepped up and assisted my mother in various ways to be able to make sure that I stayed in school,

even with comfort support. Because one of the the things that we've learned as an organization is that it's not just about the financial means, it's also about the psychosocial support that children need to be able to stay in school. I was crying. I was weeping most of the time. I was really not in the classroom. And then I learned later that you need to decide how you use

every opportunity you get. I started looking at this as an opportunity to do better by me and for the community that it trusted me, rather than feeling like, you know, it's okay for all of us to wallow in poverty

and end like that. And the fact that these young women are coming back and supporting one average three other children were not even their relatives, continues to increase communal support for supporting more and more girls to go through this, because it's more like confidence become the gift that continues to give through what's enabled within every community. I'm wondering how much it costs to support a girl in school

via camp fed. In Africa, it's actually basically just one hundred and fifty dollars per year for one year of supporting a girl through secondary school. That's the average cost for a year. So in the United States that sounds like nothing. And you've said you've supported nearly five million girls through school. What's the scale that you think the organization can achieve and what's the what's the ultimate goal

is a parody between girls and boys. Our vision as an organization has always been a world in which each and every child is educated, protected, respected, valued, and girls up to ten the tide of poverty every child. And our strategic plan over the next five years is to support five million more girls through school. And I think you realize that. You know, we've supported close to five millions since nine to three, and we're going to support

five millions in five years. That's ambitious. But we're also counting on the support of our Comfort Association with we're actually traveling the support that you know we're providing as an organization at the moment. So looking at forward to the end of the pandemic, do you think there is going to be a lasting deficit from that or do you think we will quickly get back to where we

were before the pandemic. In relation to girls education in Africa, we need to pull up our songs in a very big way because the pandemic exposed, like I said earlier on the disparities and the system that we already knew existed, but they just exacerbated them. Do you think COVID sets back your call of girls education in Africa for a year or two and then we get back to where we were or is this something that sets us back

a generation? Over ninety seven point four percent of our children, like of the girls that we're supporting, came back to school, returned to school. That's not true for the majority of other children who didn't have the same social support. So that's an area that we need to work on. We also need to address issues around, of course, teacher training, issues around ensuring that we continue to recognize that girl's

exclusion is still an issue even after the pandemic. For me, it's you know, for us as an organization, it's continuous an ensuring that there's this pipeline of young people that continues to be supported and support the next generation too. You know, having fifty two million girls out of school in subsid and Africa is nowhere where we want to go. But I acknowledge the fact that this really set us

back in terms of the progress that we've met. But then lessons that come from tragedy means that if we we have learned, and when I say we are then not just civil society and then the government, everybody who was working in education or in rise in climate every day. If we have learned, we should actually be able to expect diet our solutions to the crisis that we face. This should actually move us a head faster because we have learned that these are not hypothetical realities around things

could get worse. They did get worse in a way that we all didn't think it would. We saw a lot of flight of people that basically just been planted into communities to be able to work with communities. Well COVID here people started leaving and local communities said to

find their own foots. So if we've invest and built on our license around local engagement, local ownership of issues, local capacity building, but we also built on the opportunities that are through technology, I don't see a reason why we shouldn't be able to gallop further faster than we've done over the past few years. As you say, educating girls has so many positive effects on other problems. I think part of the reason you've camped has attracted so

much high profile support. I note that Megan and Harry listed it as one of the charities they were supporting. Rihanna has been a supporter of yours. Nick Christoph, the New York Times columnist, at the end of the year make suggestions if what charities people should support, and a camp fed was at the top of his list this year. What you're doing is getting noticed. What else has to happen for your organization to be able to do as

much as it's capable of doing, to scale its response. Yeah, I'll say to you what I said to a lot of people over the past year, particularly the work of COVID and everything. Continue to invest in girls education. You support me, I support three more. You know, that's the wealthy investment, right, That's the most important thing. Talk to your friends, talk to your colleagues and everything. The problem is real, but so is the solution. It's so simple

and so straightforward. You live to tell a different narrative, and I look forward to that does your model have application beyond Africa or is the situation just too different in different parts of the world. My better World, which is the you know, the curriculum that have been used

across the spectrum. They have been huge demand for it to be used beyond Africa because at the center of it is the principal accountability to the child, to the child's needs, to the child's reality, to the child's priority. How do we make the child the non negotiable component of our intervention? And I believe that's universally acceptable everywhere, but it's also messuring that this is done in total engagement and liaison of the community of the parents as

equal partners, not just as mere recipients of aid. So I believe that this is applicable across the spectrum and it's replication a close Africa actually with speed and is it is also proved that Yeah, And you, as an educator, I know you think about what kinds of tools are going to get people to really understand the problem, not just past the test by knowing the facts, but really

relate to it. And I wonder if they're books or movies or things that you would recommend to our listeners who want to really understand better what you're talking about. I have a phenomenal resources that I could share. There is a film done quite recently by Iden like Why Ida m It was Hidden Pride for Education Development, which is revolutionizing how girls education is delivered. You can listen to that. It covers myself and Michaelague Lucy like as

we talk about our work as well. That's something that we're listening to. There's Nick Christoph and Cherio's book Half the Sky, Turning Oppression into Opportunity for women worldwide. There's a chapter also that types of about my life and we're started from. But more than that, it also talks about, you know the fact that actually talent is universal opportunities not, so how do we make a difference. So I think

that's that's really good. I also have a book that I really like that he helped me and my fellow sisters, like you know, the Confidate Association members, to understand our reality as we graduated from school. And it's a book by A Machia Sam Development as Freedom, because it talks about just you know, just that you know, development um

is freedom. That's that's less that I never really perceived my life through and that's you know, that's what he helped us structure camera in a big way when we're just starting the Confidate Association in a big way, when we're just starting to look at ourselves as you know, how is this education widening our freedom as young women from patriarchical communities, as young women were the first in our communities to graduate. So I think that's another book

that i'd recommend. And finally, Max and Molina talks about a gender justice Development and Rise. So there's an article that you know, she wrote in a book that I would recommend that you also read because it talks about power and how just opportunity also allows to challenge power is specific in various communities, and for me, this is also about gender justice. So I would say those are the four articles, but there's just so much to read

out there. But I also just admit that some of the work I don't agree with around that talks about our culture as the reason why girls are not a school. Poverty is the culprit. You know, poverty continues to force coool solutions on parents, and I think that needs to

be understood. So I would say look for articles that talk about that for me, the most important message that I just want to be able to reaterate is that girls education continues to be a problem, but it's and we can do something in this generation to make the world a beta place. You know, all the challenges that we face today, improved incomes for families we talk about climate action can be solved, you know, through investing in education. So I just want to be able to say that,

you know, that's that's the most important area to invest in. Angie, thanks for joining us Unsolvable. Thank you so much for this. I appreciate. Angeline Murramirawa is executive director of the Campaign for Female Education or camp SET. To learn more about access to education and the rest of the un sustainable development goals, please check out the links in our episode notes. Solvable Senior producer is Jocelyn Frank, Research and booking by

Lisa Dunn. Catherine Girardell is our managing producer, and our executive producer is Mia Lobell. Solvable is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us. It helps us get the word out. You can find Pushkin Podcast wherever you listen, including on the iHeartRadio app and on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jacob Weisberg.