TACTICS OF HOPE CASE STUDY 5 – HOW ANN COTTON IS CHANGING THE CULTURE OF POVERTY IN AFRICA BY EDUCATING YOUNG WOMEN

Wilford and his wife Carole hosted Ann Cotton on their houseboat in Sausalito for a “friend-raiser”for the organization Ann founded 15 years ago, and it was my deep honor to meet this radiant woman I had studied and been researching in awe since I wrote a paper on social entrepreneurship two years ago at Middlebury College. Ann’s daughter Helen and David Ebert, the son of the first chair of CAMFED (the Campaign for Female Education), had just produced an incredible documentary film called Where the Water Meets the Sky in which Helen and David put cameras in the hands of women who then became filmmakers documenting the very real poverty, AIDS pandemic, and lack of access to education in their own lives. The film is narrated by Morgan Freeman and has won numerous awards, including best picture at Jackson Hole film festival.


For more on this case study and others like Ann Cotton, visit us at www.tacticsofhope.org/resources

Ann Cotton’s on-the-ground exposure to extreme poverty in Zimbabwe in 1991 changed her life and, in doing so, the futures of hundreds of thousands of young girls in Africa. During that trip, Ann saw clearly the link between the lack of female education and extreme poverty. Since then, Ann and her team have built an organization that currently provides educational opportunities for over 400,000 children and young people in rural villages in sub-Saharan Africa. CAMFED works in partnership with local communities and ministries of education, using an approach that seeks to systemically break the cycle of poverty.

To educate girls is to reduce poverty. No other policy is as likely to raise economic productivity, lower infant and maternal mortality, improve nutrition and promote health—including the prevention of HIV/AIDS.
—Kofi Annan, Former UN Secretary General

In her interview with us, Ann says:

“I had never before witnessed the depth of poverty I witnessed in Zimbabwe and I was initially shocked by what I saw. I was also deeply disturbed by the level of insecurity the young girls had to deal with every day. I realized that the high levels of maternal and child mortality were both caused by women’s vulnerability and their lack of access to education. I found that most parents wanted their daughters to go to school but they did not have the funds to pay for them to do so. In most cases the parents used their scarce resources to educate their sons rather than their daughters because boys had the best chance of securing paid work in the future. My realization was contrary to the broadly held notion that cultural resistance was the main reason for low female school attendance.

On one of my walks between villages, I met two teenage sisters, Cecilia and Makarita. They had bussed and walked sixty miles to attend the Mola Secondary School because the costs were much lower at Mola than at schools near their home. Yet these two young girls told me that they did not know whether their parents would have enough money for them to return to school the next term. As I lay awake at night fearful that scorpions were about to fall upon me from the thatched roof above, I realized that the girls were trapped. I also realized that what kept the cycle of poverty in place was not a poverty of culture but the culture of poverty.


CAMFED students at class under the shade of a tree

Back in England in 1992, my first effort to raise money to enable young girls like Cecilia and Makarita to go to school was making and selling cakes and sandwiches with friends at the local market. Before long I had raised enough money to pay for thirty-two girls in Zimbabwe to go to school for a year.

Right from the start, our approach was to set aside preconceived notions of what the challenges and the solutions were and to listen carefully to the needs and suggestions of the local villagers. They suggested, for example, that the scholarship money should go directly to the schools rather than to the families of the recipients. They recommended that CAMFED only hire locals to run the CAMFED offices rather than rely on expatriates. They stressed the importance of transparency so that everyone knew who was making what decisions and how educational funds were being allocated. They joined us at meetings with the Ministry of Education at the national and district levels to support the initiative and assure its effective implementation.

It has now been fifteen years since CAMFED was founded and I still feel energized by our work. What satisfies me most is seeing the change in others, such as when I meet a girl who received an education because of CAMFED and is now doing wonderful things she would not otherwise have had the opportunity to do.

My advice to others who want to get involved in any social effort is first and foremost for them to find their passion, to get to a point where they have no choice, where they have to act, have to get involved. One has to care enough to let go of fear, to care enough to risk failure and look upon not trying as failure. And listen always, and most carefully, to those experiencing the problem you want to try to solve.”

The CAMFED Model—A Bottom-Up Collaborative Approach

CAMFED now is in the midst of seeking to bring about systemic change in the education of young girls in Africa. Ann has turned CAMFED into a charitable organization that is making it possible for hundreds of thousands of youngsters in Zimbabwe, Ghana, Zambia and Tanzania to receive an education. Most are girls, although some orphan boys are also supported. Boards of trustees are active at each branch, supported by an international advisory board.

CAMFED’s model brings transformative benefits not only to the young girls who they help educate but also to the well-being of their families and communities. A virtuous cycle is set in motion, whereby girls are supported through childhood education and post-school years to become leaders who are in a position to break the cycle of poverty during their own lifetime as well as during the lives of future generations.

The following are some of the most important principles guiding CAMFED’s approach:
 
•    A clear, powerful and inspiring vision
•    A focus on systemic change
•    A bottom-up collaborative approach
•    Staff in each country recruited locally
•    Close working relationships with the ministries of education in each country
•    Transparency
•    Replicability
•    Results-driven
•    A long-term commitment to those CAMFED seeks to educate


Read more about these principles and other stories like Ann's at www.TacticsofHope.org/resources