Stories

Stories to Help People Understand the Power of Education

#1 The Heart of the Problem and the Solution: Education for All

We would like to take a moment to read a short excerpt about a young man in Rwanda who had been denied an education, but is now attending school because educational barriers have been lifted.

Jean Pierre Nzamurambaho dropped out of school in the middle of his third year of primary school when he was just 12 years old. “I decided to drop out because I was tired of being sent home because we couldn’t pay school fees,” explains Jean Pierre in his native language of Kinyarwanda. “I spent two years doing domestic jobs, but I could not see any future for myself.”

In 2004, two years later, the Government abolished primary school fees and replaced them with capitation grants (grants that are determined by the number of pupils attending the school). Jean Pierre was able to return to his primary school in a rural village of Rulindo district in the Northern Province. His ambition now is to become a teacher and provide an education for the children of his village.

Jean Pierre is typical of many of the pupils who have been given a chance to study. Between 2002 and 2006, the net enrolment rate rose from 73.3% to 94%, which means over 500,000 more children getting an education. And this includes girls, whose education has long been sidelined in Rwanda in favor of male children.

13 year old Seraphine had the same experience. She says, “During my first year, I was always sent back home because of either school fees or uniform. Nowadays, teachers are no longer sending us back home, and even if I don’t put on uniform, I come and study freely. I only have to make sure I’m clean.” This new opportunity has allowed Seraphine to set her sights on becoming a nurse in the local health clinic.

When we learned that children are denied an education because they are poor, we could not sit by and not take action. We hope you feel the same way, and want to discuss ways we can work together to provide to ensure that the U.S. effectively contributes to improving access for all children to a quality education.

#2 The Heart of the Problem and the Solution: Education for All

We are here to talk to you about helping all children receive a free, quality education. We would like to take a moment to read a story about a child in Guinea-Bissau that motivates us, and we hope you, to be a leader for change.

Like many girls in Guinea-Bissau, Mariama Sambu, 10, has a busy life. She rises at six each morning to help with household chores, which is no easy task when you share your small home with 18 other people.

The structure of her house – bricks made of mud, a dirt floor and a corrugated metal roof – stands as a reminder that Mariama lives in one of the five poorest countries in the world. There is no electricity or running water, so Mariama must walk each morning to a nearby well, which was provided by UNICEF. Before this well was built, she had to walk 2 km for water, which left her little time to prepare for class.

Now she arrives at class fully prepared and eager to spend her morning learning. Mariama has quickly emerged as one of the top students in the village. She hopes her journey will continue after she finishes her schooling.

“I want to be a teacher, to help my mother and father,” says Mariama. “That would give us an easier life.” 

We’re sure you’re as moved as we are by the power of education to transform lives of children and their communities as. We’d like to work with you to ensure the U.S. effectively contributes to improving access for all children to a quality education.

#3 The Heart of the Solution: Education, Changing Lives and Minds

We are here to talk to you about something I am sure we all care deeply about: education for all, especially for children who have been denied this right for too long. Many RESULTS volunteers are also active in other organizations and overseas. We’d like to take a moment to relate a story from one our volunteers about her experience working to provide education for girls in Afghanistan.

It took place back in 2002. There is a little Afghan girl who was about 9. I don’t know her name, but I’ll call her Parvana. After the Taliban was removed from power, girls were allowed to go to school for the first time, but Parvana’s father did not allow it. While all of her friends started the first grade, she was told to stay home. Day after day, she saw her classmates walking into school. Seeing the excitement of her friends, she started sneaking into school. One of the teachers approached her realizing the danger. Although this little girl could have been publicly whipped or stoned for disobeying her father, she willingly took the risk. Even at this young age, she realized the importance of education.

Well, one day, Parvana didn’t show up at school and her colleagues feared the worse. Well, the story is this. Earlier that week Parvana’s father had received a letter from a relative in Pakistan. He was illiterate; he couldn’t read it. Nor could anyone else in his family. Subsequently, we later learned how this little girl bravely came forward and told her father that she could read it for him. Instead of beating her, he actually embraced her. Although he was shocked, he was proud. She was the first person to read in his entire family. This story reverberated throughout the district. That girls’ school went from 420 girls and 8 teachers to almost 1000 girls and over 20-some teachers. Other girls’ schools in the area started and blossomed as well.

This story reminds us about the power of education to build confidence, respect, self-worth, and the respect of your community. This transformational effect has the power of “positive deviance” — changing norms and lives by leading by example. Yet there are still at least 72 million primary school aged children not in primary or secondary school, the majority of who are girls like Parvana. How can we work together to increase U.S. support to help these children achieve a quality basic education?

#4 The Heart of the Solution: Education, Providing Hope for the Future

I’d like to share a story with you about the moment that Gene Sperling, former chief economic advisor to President Bill Clinton, truly understood why we must support providing every child with a quality basic education.

In 2000, Mr. Sperling was in a village an hour and a half drive from Dakar, Senegal. Mr. Sperling was in Dakar to lead the Clinton administration’s delegation to the United Nations Education for All Conference, a meeting dedicated to ensuring that all primary school-aged children in the world would be enrolled in school. The goal was to have been achieved by 2000, but by that year, there were still more than 100 million children not in primary school. After the conference, Mr. Sperling visited a village that only had a first and a second grade:

We went to listen to the second graders. They were coming up to the board doing . . . math assignments. There were about 80 kids in the class, one teacher. And at the end I said to the guy from the U.S. Embassy, “Can we take some questions?” And he said he didn’t want me to have them take any questions. And I said, “Why?”

He said, “because they’re extremely poor children and you’re a very rich man to them and if you tell them to ask questions, one of them might make an inappropriate request.” So the guy from the Embassy was worried that if I took questions from the second graders they were going to ask for money or shoes or something. So I waved that off and said, “Don’t worry about that.” So sure enough we asked for questions and the first child puts his hand up, and it was a young boy, and he says “Do you think next year at our school we can have a third grade and a bathroom?”

I’ll tell you, if there was a moment I became committed to [this] issue, it was just that simple. Here we were looking at a school for just first and second graders and the reality [is], here’s a kid who’s finishing second grade and all he wants to do is go to third grade and it’s just not in the cards . . . and then a bathroom. It never crossed my mind there wasn’t a bathroom at [this] school. And all I could think in light of this guy from the Embassy’s line was, that was hardly an inappropriate request, for a child to want to go to third grade, or fourth grade, or fifth grade and the idea that essentially the answer was no. Nobody cares enough to make sure this school has a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, [or] eighth grade. It’s just so heartbreaking and so wrong.

A simple bathroom and another year of school . . . that’s all this child wanted. How can we work together to make sure children who want to go to school can?