HELP EXPAND WOMEN'S LITERACY AND LEADERSHIP!

 

You can help a woman improve her family's income, health and future by giving the gift of literacy, today! By donating $35, $50, $100 or more, you can help World Neighbors expand our literacy program to better reach women in rural areas of Burkina Faso.

Women's literacy is such a powerful catalyst for improvement for women and their families, no matter where they live. Many consider women's literacy as the single most important factor in ensuring that families and communities are able to progress toward safe, healthy lives of dignity. Consider the following:

• As women become more educated, they have improved health and nutrition.
• An educated woman is more likely to delay marriage, and to have fewer, healthier children.
• Improving women's literacy rates by 1% is three times more likely to reduce deaths among children than a similar rise in the number of doctors.
• Mothers with a primary school education are more likely to ensure that their children, especially their girls, attend school.
• When women obtain some education, their families have better lives all-round, including improved housing, clothing, income, water and sanitation.

Burkina Faso, in West Africa, has one of the lowest literacy rates for women in the world. The fact that you can read this sentence sets you apart from three quarters of the people there. If you are a woman, walking through the market, you can assume that almost nine of every ten women you pass on that walk are unable to read and write.

But you can make a difference! You can help ensure that not only are women literate, but that they are empowered to realize the full benefits of literacy. Literate women are empowered, and less likely to be taken advantage of when buying or selling fruits and vegetables and other goods. They are looked up to in the communities, growing in confidence and increasingly involved in decision making in their homes and their villages. Women's leadership rises as literacy levels go up.

This literacy program expansion will be aimed especially at women, and respond to their needs as previous programs haven't:

• Class times will be offered during a time of the day when women can break away from their household responsibilities.
• Lessons will be in smaller "chunks," so that women can balance them with their ongoing work.
• We'll provide support to women to lighted their workloads, for example helping to carry water, so as to free up their time.
• Childcare needs will be built into the class so that they can easily attend, without needing to leave children alone or to arrange care on their own.

Would you please join us in making this possible? Your gift today will help women attain basic literacy skills that enable them to improve their lives, and improve their families' income, health and future.

 

DONATE NOW!

It is so inspiring to see the hope and pride in a woman's eyes as she writes her name on a piece of paper for the first time. Imagine what it means when she can read a document, or confidently check over sales numbers for the vegetables she sells in the village market. Please join us in making this possible for more women!