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Session Submission Summary

Mentors: The Connecting Link for Girls in Conflict and COVID-19

Wed, April 20, 5:00 to 6:30pm CDT (5:00 to 6:30pm CDT), Hyatt Regency - Minneapolis, Floor: 2, Greenway B

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Adolescent girls in Mali confront a host of barriers to educational access. Although enrollment rates for boys and girls have risen over the last 20-30 years, a gender gap has persisted nationally, with girls enrolled at a lower rate (63.4 percent gross enrollment rate in lower primary school) than that of boys (74.8 percent). After the coup d’état in 2012, normal systems and processes were fractured, leaving approximately 1 million primary age Malian children were out of school. Over the last 10 years, the conflict in Mali has further unraveled the fabric of government institutions and services, including two additional coups, numerous teacher strikes, and the closure of 1,113 of schools across the country. This has particularly affected the northern region of Mopti, where the ongoing conflict has further prevented girls from enrolling and staying in school.

As such, the USAID-funded Mali Girls’ Leadership and Empowerment through Education (GLEE) project seeks to increase access to education for adolescent girls (10-18 years) and enable them to obtain greater educational attainment. GLEE’s theory of change suggests that to increase girls’ enrollment and success at school, change is needed at the level of girls themselves and within their social groupings and institutions: their peers, families, schools, healthcare facilities, communities and the structures that support them.

Through a formal panel presentation, representatives of the GLEE project team, including key stakeholders and changemakers, will highlight the impact of peer mentors and the integral role that they played during ongoing conflict, several teachers strikes and closures, and COVID-19 to keeping girls and communities engaged in education.

ver the last 10 years, Mali has been plagued by conflict and instability, resulting in fractured systems and government institutions and an out-of-school children population of more than 2 million children between ages five to seventeen. In order to address the large out-of-school population and the disproportionate number of girls, GLEE began by engagement with communities to identify a multi-pronged approach to getting girls back into schools. Young women (ages 21-35 years old) who were already trusted within their communities were nominated by village chiefs and leadership to become the mentors at the beginning of the program. First conceived as a way to support girls’ positive health behaviors, enrollment and achievement in school through extracurricular activities, the mentorship role quickly expanded as it gained in popularity with local communities. By creating a safe space for adolescents, parents began to engage with the content of the guided sessions too, opening up the opportunity for conversations around menstrual health management, sexual reproductive health, early and forced marriage, in addition to other less controversial topics like decision making and peer pressure, and rural-urban migration

Because of the mentors, girls and communities remained so engaged wit education during the teachers’ strikes, ongoing conflict, and most recently, COVID-19, community perception around education has changed. This past year alone, mentors reached 421,835 girls (Kayes 101,511 and for Mopti 320,324) aged 10-18 who attended the 7,521 sessions (Kayes 5,005 and for Mopti 2,516). With their wide spread-engagement and regular meeting space, girls continued to gather and advance education during COVID-19 despite schools being closed down. Local communities are advocating for their own resources because of parents’ and girls’ advocacy as a result of the mentorship engagement. This has translated into communities demanding accountability from their community leadership, new schools being built, education related activities being prioritized and budgeted for in local community plans, and identification of ways to encourage local teachers who have left their communities to come back to teach. The mentors have even inspired a “next generation” of young girls and boys to proactively try to step into community projects and mentorship on their own.

Mentorship, especially when those mentors are identified as trusted young adults within their own communities, has been the stabilizing link for adolescent girls in Mali, helping the individual girls and their communities build resilience to ride out the shocks and stressors of the ongoing conflict environment.

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