Mali Women Push for Girls Education

Institutions like the United Nations and World Bank are tiffany silver accessories their attention on girls education, but in countries like the West African nation of Mali only about half of all girls are enrolled in school. There are efforts by local people in rural Mali to make sure girls get an education.

Bintou Kassambara is 26 years old and lives in a town called Dioro, 150 kilometers from Mali's capital, Bamako. She started primary school much later than other children. She was 20 years old when she was in seventh grade and her family pulled her out of school.

Kassambara says her father engaged her to a cousin, an uneducated young man she did not love. She says even if she did love him, she was not ready to get married, so she ran away.

Kassambara says she did not tiffany silver bangles to stop studying in order to get married. She says she had passed a group of farmers looking at a notice. Out of all 12 people there Kassambara was the only one who could read, so she told them what the notice said.

After that, Kassambara says she realized how practical and important it is to get an education. She is not the only one in Dioro to learn that lesson.

The Benkadi Women's Association is working to get girls to attend school. According to the United Nations, 56 percent of Malian girls are enrolled in primary school, but for boys in Mali the number is 70 percent.

Assan Diakite says the association often has to give the mothers money to send their daughters to school, because tiffany silver bracelets they don't even have enough to buy a notebook. Plus, they leave their daughters at home to help with house work.