Education World Connecting Educators To What Works

By Author: Jecky chan
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Educating girls is a very powerful tool for ending global poverty. Ann Cotton is the Founder and President of Camfed, a world renowned non-profit organization tackling poverty and inequality in sub-Saharan Africa. Her internationally acclaimed work has become a significant model for girls' education in Africa. Cotton is an Honorary Fellow at Homerton College and Social Entrepreneur in Residence at the Cambridge University Judge Business School. She has won numerous awards, including an Honorary Doctorate in Law from Cambridge University; an OBE in honor of her advocacy of girls' education in Africa; the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship; Woman of the Year in the UK; and UK Social Entrepreneur of the Year. At the end of 2014, Ann was awarded the coveted WISE Prize for Education. On a recent trip to New York, she joined me at my home to talk about Camfed, global education, the WISE Prize and what has changed over the many years she has worked on education inequality in Africa.
Ann, if one wants to make a difference to education inequalities, where do you begin?
I think what you have to do first is listen very ...
... hard and learn a great deal. You work in an organic way with the knowledge, with the social capital, the institutional capital that exists. When I first worked in Zimbabwe, I was a complete novice. I was doing a study and I continued to learn more and more through the years. And where I have learned most is in the village, from the communities. So I think sometimes what happens is that the recognition of the problems and solutions are drawn up with some distance from where the problem exists and then introduced, so inevitably the solution won't work.
I think being on the ground, understanding the people, getting close to the culture must be of singular importance. Absolutely. Also, understanding that poverty is more than a material experience, it's a psychological state as well. One that is infused with anxiety. And decision-making is very complex because every decision you make has an impact on your future and survival. When I worked in Zimbabwe in the early 90s, I had read a great deal about girls' exclusion from education. The prevailing view was that girls were outside of school because of the resistance of families to their education. But when I visited a local village, what everyone told me -- the chiefs, the parents, the children -- was that girls weren't in school because it was the boys that had a better chance of getting paid work in the future.
So not allowing the girls to be educated is about economics versus a cultural barrier.
Correct. The boy could leave, go to town find work, and bring cash back. And so this pattern, if you like, which is one of multiple habits, was being interpreted as culturally imbedded. And as a result, money was being spent on posters and television advertisements to persuade people to send their children to school. I decided to share what I'd learned but I did find considerable resistance.