Hey Echoers!
It’s International Women’s Day!
When women are educated, the decisions they make have a ripple effect and can help break the cycle of generational poverty. Women who receive more education “tend to be healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn higher incomes, have fewer children, marry at a later age, and enable better health care and education for their children,” according to the World Bank.
I read the above in a Global Citizen article this morning on International Women’s Day. If there is one way to break poverty’s back in a place like Sierra Leone, it’s education. I already knew that heading to Sierra Leone for the first time as an undergraduate student. What I didn’t know is that the global efforts against poverty wouldn’t just come packaged by the branding of the largest international organizations and governments but by the organizing of women in their own communities. If that sounds ignorant - it was. I was a young white male working for an international aid organization. Meeting Esther, a local woman who ratified her community to lift young women, girls, and children out of poverty with no international assistance completely changed my worldview of what was possible with grassroots organization. That’s why, when I returned home, I wasn’t interested in only supporting large non-profits, but ensuring that financial support made it to the front lines directly - women doing the work within their own spaces and communities.
On International Women’s Day, of course my thoughts are going to be with Esther and the school. And I’m asking you to give your thoughts to them today too. I cite something frequently - the number of students whom have graduated since our formal partnership with Esther in 2012 - approximately 400. But Esther has been leading a fight against poverty since 1996. Thousands of women have been touched by her work. It’s a tough time right now in Sierra Leone. Right after our expansion to a second location, the Sierra Leone economy was hit hard and we are working to ensure the teachers are paid and the doors stay open. Contracts the school normally undertakes for catering services have shrunk considerably and they are relying on us to make up the shortfall. On International Women’s Day, please consider Esther and the Women in Action Development Project as a way to break the cycle of poverty around the world.
-Matthew
By the way, was your school ever this lively in the mornings!?