Model fights for DRC girls
A model took it upon herself to make lives better for girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and she keeps trying her best in this regard.
Her experiences as a
five-year-old separated from her parents and forced to make a new life
were the inspiration for her Malaika School and Community Centre which uses
education and sustainable development to turn around the lives of DRC girls.
The school is run by the Georges
Malaika Foundation which was nominated for the UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education
for Sustainable Development in 2018 for its Creating Agents of Change: Girls’
Education and Community Empowerment project.
Based in the village of Kalebuka
in the Haut-Katanga province in the south-east of the country, an area deeply
affected by two decades of conflict, the school was founded in 2007 by Noella
Coursaris Musunka.
Aged five, following the death of
her father Georges Malaika who the foundation is named after, she was sent by
her impoverished mother to live with relatives in Europe. A good education
meant she went on to receive a degree in business management and lead a
successful career as a model. On her return to the DRC at the age of 18, she
became impassioned to give other girls the same chance of an education in an
area where female literacy is low and around seven million children are out of
school.
“Traditionally, women here are
expected to tend to gardens and small farms, give birth, and nothing more,”
said Malaika’s country manager, Sarah Kalumba. “Before Malaika, there was no
access to electricity, clean water or educational facilities.”
The project began in a small fashion with the
sponsorship of ten girls from a local orphanage—some ostracized by society,
others had run from war. In 2010, after funding partners had been sought,
it was decided to build a school. The Malaika School opened the following year, 2011, with four classrooms, a small canteen and 104 female students.
"The real work was the
months spent convincing people in the village that education was worthwhile for
their girls. We had to beg parents to give us a chance by asking them to think
of the future. We explained that without education their daughters would
continue to work on the farm for a dollar or two, but that once educated they
could become pilots, ministers, office workers, whatever they aspired to be. An
education would have a far greater positive impact on the whole family and the
community. We used Noella as an example of what could happen,” said Sarah.
Today, the school - which is
free, entirely solar-powered, and uses food grown on its farm to serve two
healthy meals a day - provides quality education to 340 girls. Alongside a
comprehensive traditional curriculum, the students are given opportunities to
grow as leaders, from involvement in the Girl Scouts to field trips to explore
local biodiversity, planting trees or learning about malaria prevention. Girls
are also taught coding, equipping them with computational thinking skills and
preparing them for the workforce.
In 2013, thanks to a collaboration
with FIFA, a community centre was built to spread the school’s positive impact
to the wider community. The centre provides education, health and sports
programming to approximately 5,000 youths and adults per year. In addition, 17
wells have been built and refurbished that supply fresh water to 30,000 people
a year, greatly reducing water-borne diseases and illness. Parents also now
play an important role by cleaning school classrooms, growing vegetables and
taking part in sewing classes at the centre in order to make the children's
uniforms. In 2016, the centre launched the Sustainable Pathways project, a
vocational training programme to teach out-of-school youth about conservation
farming, eco-job training and running a microenterprise. It also offers
information on conservation farming methods.
According to Headmaster Sylvain
Koj Tshikut, the environment plays a critical role in the girls' education. 'We
always start with science and then introduce the girls to real-life examples so
that they can apply what they’re learning in the classroom. We take them on
trips outside the school - to the zoo or to botanical gardens, for example -
where they can see for themselves the richness of local biodiversity and how
important it is to the planet,' he said.
The community centre has also
developed a football game that teaches about the environment. “The boys and
girls play a game where cones are set out on a football field, representing
different types of environmental hazards. Their play is restricted by the
hazards and if they touch a cone they are out of the game. At the end, they are
encouraged to remove one cone at a time and learn what each represents and how
they hamper a healthy life,” said Sarah.
Malaika also believes it is
important to bring female role models to the school and for students to
understand that it is not necessary to leave the country to become involved in
meaningful work.
In the near future, both the
school and community centre aim to become sustainable in terms of funding by
creating a business model using small enterprises, such as embroidery or
soap-making, to generate cash. “We also want to develop a handbook about the
Malaika model so that it can be replicated elsewhere,” said Sarah.
She said the driving factor
behind Malaika's success was simple: “There are many reasons why this works,
but the most important is love. Each member of staff, volunteer, student, and
parent loves what they are doing and when partners and sponsors visit, that is
what they see.”
Education for Sustainable
Development empowers people with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and
behaviour needed to think and act for a sustainable future. It is also about
including sustainable development issues, such as climate change and biodiversity
into teaching and learning. UNESCO promotes ESD at all levels and in all social
contexts through its Global Action Programme.
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