A high school education benefits African girls, their families, and their communities.

The benefits of educating a girl in Africa are many—learning to read, write, and do simple math in primary (elementary) school are the first steps to better health, future employment, and improved self esteem.  Many African countries have made progress in closing the gap between girls and boys in school.  In Kenya, almost half of the children enrolled in primary school were girls in 2010 according to UNESCO.  But keeping girls in school through high school creates a ripple effect–it increases the benefits not only for girls, but also for their families, and their communities.

A recent New York Times article by Elisabeth Rosenthal suggests that one of the greatest benefits of keeping girls in school through high school is that girls who complete high school have fewer children than those who do not.  Girls not in school usually face early marriage—at 13 or younger—and younger brides have more child-bearing years leading to larger families.  In Niger, for instance, where three-quarters of girls marry before the age of 18, women have an average of seven children. Niger has one of the highest birthrates in the world.  

The implications of not keeping girls in high school are staggering. In more than half of the countries in Sub Saharan Africa, more than 40 percent of the population is under the age of 15, according to the Population Reference Bureau.  Girls who finish high school have more choices—economically, through work opportunities, and personally, because they are better able to make their own marriage decisions.  These girls tend to marry later and have smaller, healthier families. A girl who stays in school is three times less likely to contract HIV/AIDS.

Educating girls through high school is one of the goals of the Aid for Africa Girls Education Fund. The Fund is also focused on college and supporting students until they find employment. Aid for Africa’s multifaceted approach pools resources and funding to those member organizations that work best to get and keep girls in the classroom, empowering them to make educated decision about their futures.

This Mother’s Day, remember your mother by making a donation in her honor to the Aid for Africa Girls Education Fund.  You will help girls go to school and succeed in life. Mom will receive an email notification about the donation you made in her name.

World Bicycle Relief’s “Trees for Bikes”A program provides a bike for every 150 saplings planted.

Did you know that on April 22, 1970—the first Earth Day—20 million Americans demonstrated from coast to coast in the United States to call for a healthy, sustainable environment? For many, it marked the beginning of the environmental movement.  The brainchild of Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, who was concerned about mainstream America’s lack of concern about air and water pollution, it eventually led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.

The principles set forth that first Earth Day are now celebrated throughout the world, including in Sub Saharan Africa. For example, throughout Zimbabwe, there will be faith-based awareness seminars, clean-up campaigns, and an Earth Day-themed concert. The African Youth Initiative on Climate Change, an umbrella group of students and youth groups, is organizing African youth participation in the climate change debate at the national and international levels.

Aid for Africa members are playing a key role in fostering a more sustainable Sub Saharan Africa, focusing on the goals of the first Earth Day—ensuring a sustainable environment, clean water, and protecting endangered species. World Bicycle Relief has initiated a “Trees for Bikes” program that provides African children with bikes in exchange for planting tree saplings. charity: water has funded 6,185 water projects, mostly in Africa, that provide clean water for communities. Solar Cookers International has enabled more than 30,000 Sub Saharan families to cook using the sun’s energy rather than wood fuel, reducing air pollution, fostering better health, and preserving forests.  Panthera continues to protect African lions, cheetah and leopards through programs with local communities.

About 70 percent of the people of Africa derive their livelihoods from agriculture.

While many pin their hopes on technology, others suggest there are limits to how much agricultural technology—drought-tolerant seeds, for instance—will help. Mark Hertsgaard of Slate.com examined this question and found that “better seeds alone” are not the answer.  Instead, feeding the world under climate change will require a broader strategy.

Sara Scherr, president of Aid for Africa member EcoAgricuture Partners, agrees that using the model of developing a few seeds that can be grown on a massive scale will not work.  “We absolutely have to develop seeds for improved and climate-adapted varieties, but we also need to increase the diversity of seeds.” A broader approach is necessary, she says.

EcoAgriculture Partners, which helps develop landscapes that produce food and support family livelihoods while protecting environmental diversity, brought together some of the world’s leading experts in agriculture and the environment to address these issues last month in Nairobi.  Representatives from the world’s leading agriculture and environmental organizations, farmer organizations, policymaking and scientific communities, and consumer groups discussed new approaches that integrate food production, biodiversity and ecosystem conservation, and rural livelihoods and are supported by institutions and policymakers. Practices that raise crop yields, and boost water supplies and soil fertility are likely to be important parts of the solution.

Our goal, said Scherr, is “to catalyze a shift towards integrated agricultural and rural land use strategies [from the] the farmer level to the national policy level.” Learn more about the initiative Landscapes for People, Food and Nature here. 

Doctors on Call for Service Foundation

On World Health Day, April 7, think about this: Sub Saharan Africa has 11 percent of the world’s population, bears 25 percent of the disease burden in the world, but has only 3 percent of the world’s trained health workers.  Sub Saharan Africa has about 18 medical doctors for every 100,000 individuals. The United States has 270!*

While many types of health workers are needed for a functioning health system, trained medical doctors are key.  But each year, Sub Saharan Africa produces a small number of graduates from a small number of medical schools.  Many of these medical graduates emigrate to other countries where they are better paid and have better working conditions.

On World Health Day, we focus on the severe shortage of trained health professionals, particularly doctors, in Sub Saharan Africa and highlight several Aid for Africa members working to improve it.

Doctors on Call for Service Foundation, an Aid for Africa member, helps African physicians upgrade their skills through their Residency in Family Medicine Masters program in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  In this program physicians receive training in patient diagnosis and treatment. The Foundation arranges for volunteer physicians from abroad to come to rural Africa and to lead seminars for physicians on the latest medical techniques. By helping African doctors learn new medical techniques and develop relationships with non-African doctors, African-trained doctors are more likely to continue their work on the continent and not leave Africa to find it.

In Tanzania, the Touch Foundation works to increase the number of physicians, nurses, lab technicians and pharmacists.  This Aid for Africa member has helped renew and expand a medical university in western Tanzania.  One hundred and fifty doctors have already been trained and currently some 600 students attend medical school.  In addition more than 2,700  medical professionals have graduated or are receiving training thanks to Touch.  Working with the Tanzanian government, Touch also helps to expand health programs and make them more efficient. They are enabling urban healthcare workers to spend time in rural health clinics, where the need is greater.

Almost half of Aid for Africa’s member organizations are working to improve health care systems and the delivery of health care in Sub Saharan Africa.  Learn more about their work here.

*Learn more about these statistics and the state of medical schools in Sub Saharan Africa at http://samss.org.

Water is our most basic need. Everything starts with water access, including how much food someone can grow or raise. A game by One Drop lets you build a meal and shows you how many liters of water were used to produce it. The results will shock you.

The point is this: the need for water goes well beyond having enough to keep someone alive. Easy access to water means better hygiene, more crops, and more hours to devote to other work and education. On World Water Day we come together to figure out the best ways to make that happen. Every year people come together looking for possible solutions to the water crisis that endangers the lives of 400 million people in Sub Saharan Africa alone.

The good news is that it is working; in Sub Saharan Africa access to safe drinking water has improved 22 percent since 1990. But there is still a long way to go. Every 14 seconds someone, usually a child, dies due to inadequate or unsafe drinking water.

All Aid for Africa members face water challenges everyday.  Several Aid for Africa members are meeting this challenge head-on. At The Earth Institute at Columbia University, researchers are developing solutions for water conservation as it pertains to agriculture. Through their water projects, charity: water has made safe water accessible for more than 1 million people in Sub Saharan Africa. Last year World Hope International drilled its 700th well , bringing freshwater to 500,000 people. A Glimmer of Hope Foundation has funded more than 2,000 water projects in Ethiopia alone, made all the more important because at any given time, more than half of Ethiopia’s 75 million people are suffering from an unnecessary water-related disease.

Learn more about World Water Day and check out this video from charity: water, which highlights the amazing differences one well can bring to a village.

Cynthia’s WBR bicycle made getting to school faster and safer.

What is black, shiny, holds up to 200 pounds, is easy to repair, and transforms lives?  A bicycle designed and built for Africa by World Bicycle Relief!  The Aid for Africa member has just put its 100,000^th bike to work in Africa.  What can 100,000 bicycles do? Transform 500,000 lives.   In the hands of students, disaster victims, health workers, and small business owners, these bicycles are empowering individuals, communities, and entire economies.

In Sub Saharan Africa, WBR’s bicycles are serving communities in Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Here are a few of the people whose lives have been changed:

• Cynthia, who uses her bike to go to school (with her brother on the back!) and help with household chores.  Her 1.5-hour walk to school now takes less than half the time.
• Greyford, a mechanic who was trained to repair the bikes, now has some 100 clients.
• Purity, who uses her bike to deliver milk to a processing center from her father’s farm, ending their persistent problem with spoilage.
• Mary, one of the few women field mechanics who supports her two children with her work.
• Nebo, a health care provider in rural areas who has doubled the care he provides.

WBR bicycles help children with chores, like fetching water for their families.

World Bicycle Relief, a U.S.-registered nonprofit organization, was founded by Frederick K. Day (known as F.K.), a cofounder of Scram, the second-largest maker of bicycle components. Seeing a need following the 2004 tsunami, F. K. went to Sri Lanka, where he designed and distributed bicycles for disaster victims. He then saw the need in Africa, where paved roads are rare in rural areas,  and cheap bicycles last few trips on the rough terrain. Today WBR bikes are providing transportation, jobs, and hope to half a million people.  And WBR has just begun.

Women from Greenbelt Movement International harvesting food from trees.

March 8 marks International Women’s Day, when the world recognizes the achievements of women and the progress that still needs to be made. This year’s theme is Connecting Girls, Inspiring Futures, which serves as the guiding principle for many of Aid for Africa’s members.

In Sub Saharan Africa, the role of women in all aspects of life is critical, but not always acknowledged. While recognition of this role is changing, there is far to go.  For example, fewer girls than boys graduate from primary, high school, and college.  More women than men live with HIV/AIDS (12 million vs. 8.2 million). Women produce most of the food and perform almost all rural domestic work, including collecting water and firewood, preparing and cooking meals, and processing and storing food.   Women bear a disproportionate burden of Africa’s poverty — a staggering 70 percent.

Empowering girls and women though education, employment, environmental awareness, and business development has a profound effect on their own lives and those of their families, as well as on their communities.  For example, when a woman is able to find employment, she is likely to spend 90 percent of her income on her family, compared to 40 percent for a man.  Aid for Africa members are working to build and expand this empowerment in a range of ways.

In Kenya, through Aid for Africa member Greenbelt Movement International, women have planted more than 47 million trees, reversing the effects of deforestation while instilling in them a new sense of confidence and control over their lives. Solar Cookers International has enabled the women and girls in more than 30,000 families in Africa to cook with the sun’s energy, freeing them from the burdens of gathering firewood and carrying it for miles. Part of the success of the Solar Cookers program comes from establishing independent solar cooker businesses run mostly by women.  East African Center for the Empowerment of Women and Children teaches women who have never attended school reading and basic math and business skills to help them advance economically.

Aid for Africa has made a commitment to the education of girls and young women through the Aid for Africa Girls Education Fund, which is supporting scholarships for African girls at all levels, from primary through university education.  There is no better way to connect girls and inspire futures than through education.

Empowering women is a key to a more prosperous future throughout Sub Saharan Africa.  On International Women’s Day, we recognize the progress made and our hopes for the future. Learn more about how Aid for Africa members are working to empower and support girls and women.

Women attending a Boma Fund meeting.

In 2009, the proportion of people in Sub Saharan Africa living on less than $1.25 a day was just below 50 percent – the highest of any region in the world. For an individual lacking a formal education and living in a rural area in Africa with little infrastructure to provide access to outside employment, starting a small business is the best way to earn a living. Yet,  according to the humanitarian organization Care, less than 10 percent of the more than 300 million economically active individuals in Sub Saharan Africa  have access to formal financial services.

Starting a business requires a small loan or grant that traditional banks typically do not provide to people living in extreme poverty. The reasons vary, but banks point to the fact that the poor lack collateral, savings, and are too far from their offices.

Aid for Africa members are helping the poorest of the poor in Sub Saharan Africa, particularly women, start their own businesses. Our members are using a variety of microfinance initiatives, which include small loans, grants, and savings instruments. For women, often the main providers of food, health care and education for their families, these services are critical.

The BOMA Project, which works in Northern Kenya, provides start-up grants of $150 to small business groups made up of three women each who typically own kiosks selling food and basic household supplies. The key to the program is BOMA’s work with local village mentors – community leaders and role models who already have professional experience. For two years, mentors help the groups write business plans and learn record-keeping, marketing, and other valuable skills. BOMA has launched 720 income-generating businesses that have changed the lives of some 2,700 adults and more than 14,000 children.

A woman in Kenya forms a tailoring business thanks to a grant from the Village Enterprise Fund.

BOMA’s model was designed by staff at Village Enterprise Fund, another Aid for Africa member. Since 1987, Village Enterprise has helped create 23,000 small businesses. Village Enterprise estimates that every new business created through its grant and mentoring program is associated with about 18 additional meals a day, five more children attending  school, and an increase in the value of livestock of about  $500.

In rural Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, Women’s Microfinance Initiative provides small loans to women’s groups already established in rural communities. WMI works with these groups to ensure they are able to repay their loans for two years while achieving their business goals. The women then build on their success to secure favorable loan terms from institutional banks to help further grow their businesses. As of January 2012, WMI had made more than 4,300 loans to women in some 300 villages.

Whether it is a widow who needs to expand her second-hand clothing business or a woman who wants to buy a goat for milk production, Aid for Africa’s members are providing Africa’s poorest with the tools to succeed as entrepreneurs. Aid for Africa will be highlighting some of the women and men who have benefited from the microfinance efforts of our members in future blogs.

Isaac Munene singing his song, Maendeleo Lewa, for Lewa Wildlife Conservancy staff.

Aid for Africa does not often enough sing the praises of its members who are working to conserve wildlife in Sub Saharan Africa.  But, as you are about to read, Isaac Munene actually does sing about the good work of Aid for Africa member Lewa Wildlife Conservancy.

Aid for Africa’s members working on wildlife conservation take a community approach, partnering with local communities that share land with endangered and other species.  This range of effort includes reducing poaching by supporting education and small businesses to alleviate poverty, providing community health services, and even working with communities to support their livestock needs.

The stories of the benefits of this approach often highlight the iconic lions, rhinos, and zebras, not the children who are able to go to school, the women who are able to start agricultural or retail businesses, or the men who can protect their livestock in times of drought.

But one person who tells the entire story is Isaac Munene. He sings the praises of Aid for Africa member Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Maendeleo Lewa (Development on Lewa), a song on his first album Mitugu ya Ameru (The culture of the Ameru). Now 23, Isaac grew up in Matunda, Kenya, one of Lewa’s partner communities. Isaac graduated from high school in 2008, but didn’t have the money to attend college. Now, through hard work and perseverance, he has released his first album and is hoping to sell enough copies to allow him to enroll in music school.

The message of Maendeleo Lewa? That the Lewa model, which focuses on communities, is the way forward for conservation.

A number of our champions have gone the extra mile by holding events for Aid for Africa in their schools, communities, and online. Their inspiring generosity reminds us that when we work together, we can accomplish great things. We highlight some of them below.

When Virginians Dave and Lisa Robertson visited Ethiopia in 2008, they witnessed widespread poverty firsthand, particularly its impact on the children living there. With their own children in mind, they decided that they would donate 50 percent of the profits of their on-line business, All Kids Lamps, to children in need of education, medical care, water, food, clothing, and shelter.  Aid for Africa members have been a major beneficiary of their generosity.

The Aid for Africa Shameless team—Tyler, Alex, and Tom.

Tom Abell and two friends from Illinois State University are big fans of the hit television show Shameless. They are also big fans of Aid for Africa. For five days they competed in Showtime’s Walk of Shameless Competition in New York City, where they put in 12-hour days on a treadmill and performing outrageous stunts for the show. By the end of the competition, they had won a sizable sum for Aid for Africa and raised people’s consciousness about Africa.

This fall, high school senior Brittany Alexis of Fort Worth, Texas, wanted to combine her two passions – dance and helping others.  She undertook a project she called Choreographing for a Cause, which culminated in an event this month that brought together young dancers from the city to showcase their talents and raised funds for the Aid for Africa Girls Education Fund.

And in Lolo, Montana, the eighth-grade class at the middle school combined learning about how to create small businesses with choosing where to donate their profits.  Aid for Africa was pleased to be the beneficiary of this lesson!

Whether you have supported us financially through online, event, or workplace giving or you have shared our blogs and tweets with your friends and families, we send our love and thanks to you.

Interested in raising funds for Aid for Africa in your community? You can now set up a fundraising page through our partner, Razoo, and begin collecting money online for your event from friends and family. Just click the fundraise button on the right-hand side of our page and you’ll be set up in under two minutes.