CAMFED - An Introduction - Video Transcript

Voiceover In 1993, a group of 32 girls in Zimbabwe started on a journey set to change the future of their communities, their countries and the world. Poverty had forced them to drop out of school. CAMFED – The Campaign for Female Education – brought them back… 52 million girls in sub-Saharan Africa are excluded from education.

A girl without education is powerless in the face of hunger, powerless over her own body. Without support, she will stay locked in the cycle of poverty, inequality and early marriage. But what happens when a girl has the opportunity to learn? What changes? She can put her education first. Choosing if and who to marry. After graduation, she will earn twice as much, creating the foundation for entire communities to thrive.

She’ll have a healthier family with lower rates of HIV, AIDS and malaria. She will invest in her children’s education and support them to succeed through education. She will gain agency and control over her future, and pass on her skills to others. She will teach, practice law, medicine or make policy. She will run an eco-friendly business, increasing productivity, nourishing communities, and building resilience to climate disasters. She will lead with respect from men, in partnership with men.

So how do we make these changes a reality? By building a model for girls’ education like no other, led by young women who know what it takes for a girl to go to school. Partnering with parents, teachers, traditional leaders and government officials, CAMFED has built an unrivaled support network for the most excluded children across five countries and more than 7,018 school communities. And the most unique and powerful outcome of our work is our Pan-African leadership network established by our first graduates.

Our CAMFED Association of women leaders today has more than 207,000 members. We are united by one goal to ensure that no girl is excluded, that every girl secures her right to education. We know that educating girls solves some of the world’s biggest problems, and we are the experts in reaching the most excluded girls in their communities. We get girls into school, keep them there, help them to learn, support them to succeed and unlock their power to lead. And together with our partners, we have already supported 5.5 million children to go to school with lived experience and empathetic leadership.

We are setting course for gender equity, social justice, economic development, and climate action. And we’re on an incredible trajectory. Our unstoppable commitment to change means we can scale our impact while keeping the organization lean. This is a game changing moment! Join us. Together we really can change the world.