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When you educate one girl, you educate many - Video Transcript

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Text over moving imagery In 1993 CAMFED (Campaign for Female Education) was launched in Zimbabwe, supporting girls from the most impoverished communities through secondary school. In 1998 those graduates formed an alumni association, CAMA. Today they continue to tackle poverty and inequality by empowering girls through education. 

 

Angeline Murimirwa, CAMFED Executive Director for Africa Girls face a lot of barriers to go through school. I was a star student. I had the best results in the country possible – straight A’s – but what I didn’t have was the money and the resources to get me through secondary school.

 

Abigail Kaindu, CAMFED Leadership Coordinator I have seen how painful it is to be uneducated and how painful it is not to know what you are entitled to. Where girls are not allowed to be girls, girls are not allowed to, you know, own property, girls are not allowed to say no, just because she is a girl.

 

Fiona Mavhinga, Founder of the CAMFED Association The transition of young women from school into adulthood is a very difficult one. They are vulnerable to exploitation, exploitative labor, exploitative relationships. So being in the CAMA network provides them a safe space to make this transition from school into adulthood. 

 

Angeline Murimirwa, CAMFED Executive Director for Africa I’m one of the first girls that CAMFED started supporting. It was after we had all completed secondary school and we were together, all 400 of us, for the first time in one room, and we were talking about what it meant to be in school. Particularly given that we almost missed that opportunity.

 

Fiona Mavhinga, Founder of the CAMFED Association We are showing that when you educate one, you educate many. Our members support on average three other children. They support them with books, uniforms, they pay their tuition fees, they provide for their food and other supplies they need to ensure they stay in school. I myself was supported through school, and I’m now a lawyer and I have supported 22 other children to go to school.

 

Abigail Kaindu, CAMFED Leadership Coordinator You don’t feel alone. You feel that sense of belonging. I was happy to mingle with my fellow CAMFED beneficiaries because I knew we were sharing the same background.

 

Angeline Murimirwa, CAMFED Executive Director for Africa Right now CAMFED is in 5 countries, we have supported over 3 million girls, real girls, not numbers, in school!

 

Fiona Mavhinga, Founder of the CAMFED Association When we have ensured that every child is in school, we will see our communities transformed, we will see improvements in health, we will see women taking leadership positions, and we will see improvements in our economies of our communities, extending to our countries. 

 

Abigail Kaindu, CAMFED Leadership Coordinator I never dreamt in my whole entire life, that I might go to New York, that I might go to America, but it’s something that can be done once you are educated. You can travel, you can do anything that you want, you can meet any person around the globe. It starts with education.

 

Angeline Murimirwa, CAMFED Executive Director for Africa I don’t just think, I haven’t just read, that education can transform lives, I have lived it, I have seen it in my own life. I think if we care so much about what we do, we can do anything. 

 

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