Toubakouta Day 3

Written February 16th, 2022

Today’s focus was on human rights. We started the day at a Center of the Promotion of Reinsertion. There is one civil servant who works there and works with several different groups such as those who have been in prison, handicapped individuals, orphans, HIV patients, and displaced persons just to name a few. It blows my mind that one person is tasked with so many different groups. The majority of the people the center works with are those with handicaps. In smaller villages, there are stigmas against certain individuals so the center seeks to raise awareness to families and provide a place to bring such individuals. The community-oriented values of the villages sometimes pose a problem to human rights since they are slow to denounce violence in a family. Furthermore, the first step in a domestic-violence case is to remove the individual from the house, but as of now, there are no places to bring them. So the issues remain complex.

The second place we visited was the high school. There we met with a group of girls who are a part of “Programme Nos Soeurs Leaders” Our Sister Leaders. The group was started by an American who worked in the Peace Corps in Senegal. After coming back to the United States, she sought a way to increase the participation of girls in school. Now the program selects especially vulnerable girls (from low-income families, orphans, parents with handicaps), and helps them stay motivated in school.

One part of the program that I found especially interesting was that the leaders choose strong candidates in the program and give them a goat. Once the goat gives birth, the girls must give the goat to another student at least twice to increase solidarity. Then, they can sell the baby goats and deposit money in a bank account to be accessed after formal studies (we learned in my finance class that having a banking account is very rare here, especially in rural areas, so I find this practice interesting too). I didn’t catch the other reasons for this practice but found it interesting. The program mainly focuses on raising awareness on issues that affect young women like marriage at a young age, reproductive health, FGM, ect. The program puts on skits and shows films among other practices to educate the community.

Along with education, the program seeks to empower women. One girl said that before starting she could hardly present in front of her class, but now she have a 30 min + presentation in front of foreigners which even I would be intimidated to do. The program seeks to build up self-confidence and establish emotional links where they might otherwise be lacking. Often life will not be easy for these girls, so the program focuses on resilience. Also, many of the girls have never left the village, so the program also takes them to Dakar or other large cities so they know how to handle themselves in a new environment.

I think this program is so cool because it takes into consideration all of the problems of international development we have talked about during our classes. First, the program is run fully by Senegalese people who understand the culture of each village. They know how to approach the chief of the village in a way that makes him receptive. Secondly, not only do they target young girls, but also their parents and young men. The program realizes that the girls need the support of their parents to fully work and young men have a lot of power in the household to influence their sisters and parents. Finally, the girls themselves choose which modules they want/need to learn about which creates internal interest, instead of the imposition of an outside source.

No, the program is working on expanding to other regions in Senegal, helping girls once they graduate high school, and even starting programs in colleges. Overall, I think we were all encouraged to see an example of successful social action.

Also at the end of the night, we saw a forest fire in the distance which looks like a sunset but it was a fire in the distance (no villages were nearby).