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Aid for Africa Girls Education Fund Spotlight–Phoebe Amoako
March 29th, 2013Phoebe Amoako– A Passion for Education Realized Phoebe Amoako grew up in Tema, Ghana, a port city in the southeast of the West African country. One of three children raised by a single mother, Phoebe has always had a passion for learning. In her early school years it was for math and geography. After [...]
New Test May Signal the End for a Biblical Disease
February 20th, 2013It’s a disease associated with Biblical times—leprosy. But even today, leprosy affects 3 to 4 million people around the world, many in Africa. Some 250,000 people contract the disease each year. Aid for Africa member American Leprosy Missions is the oldest and largest organization working to eradicate the disease and to support those who live [...]
Today is A Day to Recognize Girls
October 11th, 2012A global campaign to support the empowerment of girls has led to the United Nations designating October 11th as the very first International Day of the Girl. Aid for Africa and its members applaud this effort and support girls throughout Sub Saharan Africa through programs focusing on social justice, education, health, and economic empowerment of [...]
Building Literacy–Libraries are Changing Lives in Africa
September 7th, 2012Imagine you picked up a book and couldn’t read the words, went to take a medication but couldn’t read the instructions, or visited a new city and couldn’t read the street signs. According to the United Nations, globally, one in five adults cannot read; in Sub Saharan Africa two in five adults are illiterate and [...]
Ritah’s Story– Defeating Adversity through Education, Fighting HIV/AIDs by Giving Back
July 29th, 2012As the 19th International AIDS Conference ended this week, the delegates packed up, said their goodbyes and caught jets back to their home countries. One of those delegates was Ritah Namwiza, who recently completed a nine-month training program with UNAIDS—the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS—in Geneva. Ritah went back to Kampala, Uganda, where she [...]
Aid for Africa Girls Education Fund Spotlight–Catherine Koyiah
May 30th, 2012Catherine Koyiah, College Sophomore: Beating the Odds Each year in Sub Saharan Africa, millions of girls fail to reach their potential. Barriers to education are often to blame. These barriers include the fees and costs of supplies needed to attend school. Although low when compared to costs in the United States, they are high when [...]
Keeping Population Growth in Check: How a High School Education Changes Everything
May 4th, 2012The 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 [...]
World Water Day: Imagine if You Woke Up Tomorrow and No Water Flowed from Your Taps
March 22nd, 2012Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and no water flowed from your taps. How far would you have to walk to get to the nearest fresh water source? How long would it take you? And what things could you have done during that time if you didn’t have to devote it to your very survival? [...]
Empowering Development through Bicycles, World Bicycle Relief Reaches Half a Million People
March 16th, 2012What 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 100,000th bike to work in Africa. What can 100,000 bicycles do? Transform 500,000 lives. In the hands of students, [...]
Singing the Praises of Wildlife Conservation
February 22nd, 2012Aid 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 [...]
Overcoming Barriers to Graduating from High School
November 15th, 2011In Kenya, where three quarters of all high school students never graduate, Aid for Africa member Kenya Education Fund (KEF) helps disadvantaged students beat the odds. There are a number of reasons so many students do not finish, but most are linked to poverty. In Kenya, where all public high schools are boarding schools, the [...]
Eliminating the Obstacles Keeping African Children Out of School
September 14th, 2011This September throughout the United States, school-age children picked up their books and lunch money and headed off to school. They look forward to doing that every year through their time in high school and, for many, through college. Children of Africa are not so fortunate. Of the 68 million children worldwide not enrolled in [...]
Education on Overdrive—Creating Sustainable Schools
August 26th, 2011In Uganda and Tanzania, students supported by Aid for Africa members are learning more than reading, science, and math. They are learning how to make their schools sustainable. For the last three years in Rakai, Uganda, students and teachers at the Sabina School, an elementary boarding school supported by Aid for Africa member Children of [...]
Africa’s Newest Country – The Republic of South Sudan
July 11th, 2011On July 9 the world welcomed its newest country and the 54th in Africa—the Republic of South Sudan.
Turning the Millennium Development Goals Into Reality: Part 2
June 8th, 2011In the second blog post in our series about the UN’s Millennium Development Goals we focus on Millennium Goal 2: Ensure that by 2015, children everywhere are able to complete a full course of primary schooling. The World Bank estimates that there are 115 million children not attending school worldwide — 43 million of them [...]
Focus on Women: Realizing a Girl’s Potential and Fulfilling her Aspirations through Education
March 30th, 2011When Ann Musabe was 16 years old she was in high school in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and in need of support. She found that support through Aid for Africa member Growth Through Learning. The organization provided a scholarship that allowed Ann to attend the St. Joseph’s Girls Secondary School, where she excelled. That [...]
Focus on Women: Changing a Young Woman’s Story through Education
March 18th, 2011Caroline Kashinin Senteu is one of only a handful of Maasai women in Kenya with a college education, and although her story began as the story of most Maasai women, Caroline’s determination to get an education gives it a different ending. Caroline was born in 1985 in Loitokitok, Kenya, to illiterate and very poor parents [...]
A New Model for Helping South Africa’s Most Vulnerable Children
February 2nd, 2011The founders of the Ubuntu Education Fund in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, realized early on that that a fresh approach was needed to help the thousands of vulnerable South African children they met; children who were orphaned by AIDS, suffering from emotional trauma of rape, HIV positive, and more. Instead of making one-time donations that [...]
Aid for Africa Girls Education Fund — Helping girls go to school, stay in school, and succeed in life!
September 16th, 2010Life is tough for many poor girls in Africa. Culture and tradition often keeps them at home while their brothers go to school. Some girls are forced to marry when they are as young as 13 in exchange for a few cows. If a girl convinces her family to send her to a “free” government [...]
The Power of Books
October 1st, 2009Today’s Diane Rehm radio program featured the amazing story of a 14-year-old boy from Malawi, William Kamkwamba, who taught himself how to build a windmill out of garbage, bringing light to his remote village and transforming the lives of everyone in it. For us, the most notable piece of the story, featured in the new [...]