Girls in the Spotlight: A Lesson from Rwanda
By JOSH RUXIN
Mike McCausland/Rwanda Girls Initiative School girls at the Gashora Girls Academy, which opened in March, 2011.When I try to get people interested in the education cause in Rwanda, they often tell me that they’re up to their eyeballs in work on public or charter schools in their own neighborhoods – Upper West Side, Noe Valley, wherever. Some people, though, have a broad definition of “neighborhood.”
A couple of years back, two women from Seattle approached me about the possibility of establishing a girls’ school here in Rwanda. I’ve grown accustomed to receiving countless entrepreneurial inquiries from well-meaning people and seeing little come of them, so I must admit that my first reaction was skepticism.
Luckily, Soozi McGill and Shal Foster defied my initial doubts and have followed through on their plans with aplomb. While training together for a marathon in the United States, the two long-time friends found themselves discussing the high-quality education that their own children were receiving. From there, they started to form a vision to help children who had not been born so lucky.
By the time Soozi and Shal began dreaming about a school for girls in Rwanda, they were all too familiar with the statistics that should drive more people to take action: universal secondary education for girls in sub-Saharan Africa could save the lives of as many as 1.8 million children under five annually. One year of female schooling reduces fertility by 10 percent, and each additional year of schooling per 1,000 women helps prevent two maternal deaths.
In Rwanda, however, less than 13 percent of girls attend secondary school. Tired of simply reading the statistics from halfway around the world, Soozi and Shal decided to do something about them – and so began the Rwanda Girls Initiative (RGI).
For three years, Soozi and Shalhave collaborated with a dynamic group of education, business and civic leaders to create a new school in the dusty rural area of Gashora, on a 26-acre swath of land overlooking Lake Milayi. This month, the Gashora Girls Academy opened its doors to its first class of 90 boarding students.
The campus bustles with girls from all over the country, many of whom enjoy scholarships from individual and corporate sponsors from both inside and outside of Rwanda. Each girl pulls a mosquito net over her bunk bed at night, walks just a few minutes to each class in the morning, and benefits from the guidance of teachers and dorm parents who live and work with her day in and day out.
The Gashora Girls Academy has unique support on local and global levels. The Rwandan government – which has committed 17 percent of its total budget to education – offered funding to purchase some of the land for the academy and pay teachers’ salaries. Architectural experts from around the world designed the open-air classrooms, which stand in stark contrast to so many other Rwandan classrooms with slatted windows and stuffy interiors. A sparkling white rock pathway leads down the hill to a demonstration farm, which will enable the school to grow much of its own food while also introducing best agricultural practices to local farmers. At the center of the school’s grounds is a vast community center – complete with a computer kiosk – that will be shared with local residents and used for town meetings and school functions.
Mike McCausland/Rwanda Girls Initiative The Gashora Girls Academy, which opened in March, 2011, in Rwanda.The Gashora Girls Academy is a college preparatory school with a mission: each student should graduate with a sense of economic empowerment and a renewed commitment to her community. The academy will focus on science and technology, with an eye for equipping its girls with the knowledge and skills they need to participate in this vital growing sector of Rwanda’s economy. While so many young people around the world – especially girls – are denied the very basic right to education, the Gashora Girls Academy is a model for what it means to invest in a better future.
An idea that began as a pipe dream in Seattle has become a major investment in the young people of a nation brimming with promise.
Josh Ruxin is the founder and director of Rwanda Works and a Columbia University expert on public health. He is also the director of the Access Project and Access’s Neglected Tropical Disease Control Program. Dr. Ruxin has extensive experience operating at the intersection of public health, business and international development. He lives in Kigali, Rwanda, with his wife and two daughters.
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