Mitigating Climate change, one educated girl at a time

by Jailene Santana | Aug 13, 2020 | Environmental, Educating girls, Education, Sierra Leone | 2 comments

Not only is education key to bringing countries like Sierra Leone out of poverty, but it is also critical for the health of our planet. Educating girls has been determined to be one of the top 100 ways to combat climate change. So much so, in fact, that it was ranked 6 out of 100 solutions to reduce CO2 emissions. This ranking was determined by a thorough analysis, published in the book Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawken. A whopping 59.6 Gigatons of CO2 can be reduced by 2050 if the world committed to filling the massive educational financing gap that is currently present in low and low-mid income countries [1].

Educating girls is also a cost-competitive carbon abatement strategy [2], meaning that funding girls’ education can be as cost-effective as other climate change mitigation and carbon-abatement strategies. While conventional development literature stresses the importance of educating girls for the sake of carbon reduction in the form of limiting population growth [1, 2], we must stress that it is not this merit that we consider critical. Rather, what we consider to be important is that education provides girls and women more opportunity to think independently. Education grants the agency that they deserve as a human right. Christina Kwauk, a gender equality specialist, writes that “quality education plays a critical role in fostering girls’ leadership and womens’ capacity to participate in climate decision-making,” [3].

Not only is educating girls important and effective with regard to carbon abatement and climate change mitigation, it is also important and effective with regard to climate change adaptation. Educating girls has been found to be the “single most important” factor associated with reducing vulnerability to natural disasters, [4] many of which are exacerbated by the impacts of climate change. This is a major finding, considering that the impacts of climate change are expected to hit the poor, particularly those in less developed countries, the hardest [5].

The Fig Tree Children’s efforts in assisting orphaned children in Sierra Leone includes paying the child’s school fees directly to the school that they attend.

Fig Tree Children such as Binta* and Sinnah* above are young girls who have recently become sponsored and now have access to school, as should be their right.

Christiana*, from the time of this writing, still urgently needs sponsorship to cover her school fees. Girls like Binta*, Sinnah* and Christiana* have the potential to do great things with the education they could get.

*The real names of the children registered with us are replaced by a pseudonym to protect their identity.

Sources:

[1] Hawken, P (ed.) 2017, Drawdown: the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming, Penguin Books, New York, New York.

[2] David Wheeler and Dan Hammer. 2010. “The Economics of Population Policy for Carbon Emissions Reduction in Developing Countries.” CGD Working Paper 229. Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Development.

[3]Kwauk, C 2020, ‘Opinion: Girls’ education as a solution to climate change is about more than fertility’, Devex, 6 April, <https://www.devex.com/news/opinion-girls-education-as-a-solution-to-climate-change-is-about-more-than-fertility-96867>.

[4] Striessnig, E, Lutz, W & Patt, AG 2013, ‘Effects of Educational Attainment on Climate Risk Vulnerability’, Ecology and Society, vol. 18, no. 1.

[5] Mendelsohn, R, Dinar, A & Williams, L 2006, ‘The distributional impact of climate change on rich and poor countries’, Environment and Development Economics, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 159–178.

Menstrual Hygiene in Sierra Leone

by Jane Shakespeare | May 27, 2020 | Sierra Leone, Campaigns, Educating girls, Environmental, Partners, Period Poverty, Story | 7 comments

Let’s talk Periods!

With Menstrual Hygiene Day just around the corner, we thought we would take this opportunity to talk about how ‘menses’ (periods) affects girls of menstruating age in The Fig Tree Children.

If you would like to help to end ‘period poverty’ please have a look at our campaign at the end of this article.

Whenever you try to bring up the topic of menstruation with people in Sierra Leone, there’s definitely the feeling that periods are a taboo topic. It doesn’t surprise me to learn, that the first time most girls in Sierra Leone get their period, they have no idea what’s happening. If a girl is registered in The Fig Tree program, then she will be going to school and I would imagine if she had her period at school, this would be a challenging time for her. While she might have heard about sanitary pads, she probably will have also heard about how they can cause infertility, they’re expensive, and they’re difficult to source. She will have to try and manage her menses with ‘pieces’ (small scraps of fabric or old cloth) which as you might imagine, wouldn’t be very hygienic. If the school she attends has toilet facilities, the toilets are most probably shared with boys so privacy would be an issue. Imagine having blood on your hands and needing to wash it off! She’s likely to get teased. If her teacher is a male, she won’t have anyone to go to for support.

It’s no wonder so many girls stay home from school rather than deal with all this potential embarrassment and shame. Girls lose weeks of school a year simply because they don’t have a reliable way to manage their period!

It’s a pretty scary time for these girls. They hear stories about how once they get their period, it’s the end of their childhood, that she’s now mature and ready to have sex or have a lover, that she’s already having sex because she has her period and that she should now drop out of school and get married. Can you imagine being as young as 10 or 11 years of age and hearing this!

In Sierra Leone, teenage pregnancy and child marriage are common: data from 2015 show that nearly 40 per cent of girls are married before their 18th birthday.

However, the good news is that there are organisations in the community that are trying to put a stop to the myths, and they are educating women and girls on the truth about menstruation and sexual health. They give them practical advice and are also providing access to sanitary pads. One such organisation is Girl Child Network (GCN). Not only are they educating girls, but they also make reusable sanitary pads which they distribute to the girls who attend their training workshops. The pads they make are based on Freeda Thong’s Ecopads. In 2016, The Fig Tree Children founder, Jane, was in Sierra Leone when a container that had been shipped loaded with bicycles donated by Bikes4Life, and a few other items. Jane distributed the donated sanitary pads and gave Aminata Kamara from GCNSL 200 sanitary hygiene kits from Days for Girls Toowoomba and 30 kits from Freeda Thong at Ecopads Australia. 30 girls trialled the two different designs and chose Ecopads as the design they liked the most, hence Anita choosing to make a sanitary pad based on Freeda’s design.

Anita Koroma who is the Sierra Leone representative for GCN Sierra Leone is openly discussing menstruation with the whole community and challenging the myths that prevent so many women from reaching their full potential. This has a huge impact!

Having access to sanitary pads (reusable or disposable) improves women’s physical health and restores their sense of dignity.

Using the ‘pieces’ many girls use to manage their menses often gives the girls wounds, rashes and infection. After a while of wearing pieces, there is usually an offensive smell or odour. Having access to sanitary pads makes all the difference. The girls feel cleaner and fresher.

Reusable or Disposable?

While having any type of sanitary pad over ‘pieces’ is better, the disposal of used disposable pads is a big challenge. Waste is a global dilemma and there’s no question that replacing reusable ‘pieces’ with disposable pads is contributing to that problem. However, for girls who don’t easily have access to clean water, reusable pads that can’t be cleaned adequately is also a problem. What’s important is that these girls have the best type of sanitary pad depending on their circumstances, reusable or disposable are both better than just ‘pieces’.

Periods cause challenges for women – regardless of where in the world they live. But they are a fact of life. It is not acceptable that — for some women and girls — periods stand in the way of their right to education. Or that they are the catalyst for early marriage. Or even a source of shame and ridicule.

Here at The Fig Tree Children, we want to make sure that our girls all have access to sanitary pads, reusable if they have access to clean water to clean them adequately, or disposable, if not. However, it’s their right to choose, as it is ours too. We are starting to become more aware of the environmental effects of our actions and more and more girls are looking to reusable pads as their choice of sanitary pad. By educating girls in Sierra Leone about environmental issues will equip them to make that decision too.

We’re running a campaign to give a girl in Sierra Leone a year’s worth of sanitary pads (disposable or reusable, depending on their circumstances).

At The fig Tree Children, we are supporting children through their education by paying school fees and giving their carer a monthly allowance to help care for them. Ensuring the girls, we support, have what they need to help them during menstruation is important to us and them. We don’t want girls missing days from school because of their periods.

A donation of 30 AUD will not only give a girl a year’s supply of sanitary wear, but where reusable pads are chosen, she will also attend a menstrual and sexual health workshop and receive a menstrual bracelet. $10 of the donation will also go towards The Fig Tree Children’s Emergency Health Fund.

For girls who prefer disposable over reusable sanitary pads, we will purchase these in bulk from a local supplier, keeping our expenses to a minimum whilst supporting local business in Sierra Leone.

A $30 one-off donation will buy (for one girl):

One year’s supply of sanitary pads (reusable or disposable)
Menstrual and Sexual Health Training (when reusable pads are purchased)
Menstrual Bracelet (when reusable pads are purchased)
A $10 donation to The Fig Tree Children emergency health fund.

References

Macrotrends LLC, 2010-2020. Sierra Leone Youth Unemployment Rate 1991-2020. Available at: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SLE/sierra-leone/youth-unemployment-rate

One Girl, 2019. International Women’s Day: We’re talking periods. Available at: https://www.onegirl.org.au/news-and-stories/media-release-2019–international-womens-day

Mason, H. September 2017. Ending Child Marriage and Teenage Pregnancy in Sierra Leone. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/stories/ending-child-marriage-and-teenage-pregnancy-sierra-leone

Provide a year’s supply of sanitary pads for one girl

Don't want to buy EcoPads but still want to help? Help us ensure that girls in Sierra Leone receive a full year's supply of sanitary pads, whether reusable or disposable, based on their individual needs and situations. Additionally, $10 from each donation will support The Fig Tree Children's Emergency Health Fund, providing essential care for the children and young people in our program when they fall ill. Thank you to everyone who supports this vital campaign.

Why Sierra Leone? Why I keep going back?

by Jane Shakespeare | Jan 3, 2019 | Sierra Leone, Education, Poverty, Story, Travel | 2 comments

People sometimes ask why I’m so committed to Sierra Leone. It’s not a simple question to answer, but I’ll try.

My journey started in 2006. At the time, I was studying development economics, curious about how microcredit was impacting the lives of women in some of the world’s poorest countries, especially how it shaped outcomes for their children. I chose Sierra Leone for my research because of a friendship link between Warwick, where I was studying, and the city of Bo. It was also, at the time, the second poorest country in the world, only four years out of a devastating 10-year civil war (Human Development Report, 2006).

But no textbook could have prepared me for what I witnessed.

Back home, I had a five-year-old son, Harry. Leaving him behind in England with his dad so I could travel to Sierra Leone was tough in itself. But what made it even harder was what I saw when I arrived: a boy, no older than Harry, rummaging through a pile of rubbish, searching for something, anything, to eat or maybe sell. I couldn’t unsee that. The contrast between the lives of these two boys, born into entirely different worlds by chance alone, struck me to my core.
At home, Harry was encouraged to dream big, to take charge of his life and believe in a bright future. In Sierra Leone, most children don’t get that chance.

The challenges go far beyond poverty. As a psychiatrist friend, Dr. Roberto Ravera, once explained to me, “many Sierra Leonean children grow up in an environment of violence, trauma, and neglect. Their emotional development is shaped by mistrust and survival. Love is not a given. Joy is fleeting. For some, their perception of the world—and of themselves—has been damaged by years of hardship.

This lack of system brings many of them to disenchanted, destroyed and hopeless lives. While we know that people like that are everywhere, in Sierra Leone it is an even stronger challenge because you realise this lack of a system is the reason many children are abused, maltreated and quite often neglected.” Roberto’s research shows that many of these children live with a distorted emotional lens. Their ability to connect, to trust, and to reflect is impaired by early adversity. It’s heartbreaking, but it’s not hopeless. And that’s why I keep going back.

Every child we enrol in school, every young person we support through university or training, every caregiver we stand beside, this is our way of pushing back against that despair. Bit by bit, we’re helping build something better.

Since 2015, The Fig Tree Children has supported dozens of children and young people. Right now, we’re walking alongside 83 of them. These young people have an opportunity to rewrite their future, one that wouldn’t exist without our support.

I often feel overwhelmed. But when I do, I think of the story of the starfish.

A young boy walks along the beach after a storm, picking up starfish stranded in the sand and throwing them back into the sea. An old man tells him it’s pointless, as there are far too many, that he can’t possibly make a difference. But the boy throws another one back and says, “Well, it made a difference to that one!”

We can’t fix everything. But we can make a difference to someone.

That’s why I do what I do.

Jane ❤️

References:

United Nations, 2006. United Nations Development Programme. Available at: http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-report-2006