A matter of life and death

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In the shade of an unkempt mango tree in Samfya district, north-east Zambia, Penelop recalls her brief time living in a brothel just yards away. For three months, Penelop, 18, and three teenage girlfriends worked as prostitutes in the house, a simple but sturdy construction of fired soil bricks and elephant grass. All her friends have left now. Penelop is at school while two of the others have married and left town. The other friend has died, possibly, Penelop says, from an Aids-related illness.

“A lot of people are dying of this disease,” Penelop says. “If I didn’t start school, I would have died.”

The stark divergence in the women’s once-parallel lives is a sign of both the power of education and of the often desperate consequences that result from the lack of it. Penelop’s school fees are paid by Camfed International, a British-based charity that the Financial Times is supporting in a seasonal appeal. Camfed, which stands for the Campaign for Female Education, is founded on a sense of “absolute urgency and passion about getting girls into school and keeping them in school”, says Brooke Hutchinson, its US director.

Camfed’s work shows how aid can offer vital, emergency help to individuals and, at the same time, be complicated and sometimes problematic to apply. Spurred by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, poor countries such as Zambia and their western aid donors have been trying to enrol more children – and especially more girls – in primary school. In Zambia, the push seems to have had some effect. According to a paper prepared by Britain’s Department for International Development this year, net enrolment rose from 68.1 per cent in 2000 to 84.7 per cent in 2004, while the ratio of boys to girls at grade one has almost reached 1:1. The challenge now is to ensure these children get a quality education from a creaking system and are able to find productive and fulfilling work afterwards.

“There are efforts to improve quality,” says Barbara Chilangwa, a Camfed patron and former permanent secretary in the education ministry. “[But] I think more needs to be done.”

Camfed has grown fast in the past few years and is becoming increasingly influential in development circles. It was the brainchild of its executive director, Ann Cotton, a teacher and educational researcher from Cambridge, who was moved and appalled by the problems of school-age girls in Zimbabwe. Initially financed by family and friends, Camfed started working in Zimbabwe in 1993, later expanding into Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia, where it began operating in 2002. Its income grew from £1.3m to £2m last year and is projected to reach £3m this year. Its high-profile patrons range from the US actor Morgan Freeman to Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com.

Camfed believes educating girls is “the quickest route to alleviating poverty in Africa”. It cites support for the importance of girls’ education from distinguished – if not always uncontroversial – economists such as Amartya Sen, Jeffrey Sachs and Lawrence Summers. It says research shows that, for each additional year of education after elementary school, an African woman’s income rises 15 per cent, her vulnerability to HIV/Aids decreases sharply and her family tends to be smaller and healthier.

Camfed argues education establishes a sustainable cycle of benefits, in which the schoolgirls who go on to become business people or professionals then become role models for the next generation of children. The Camfed Association, an organisation founded by Camfed beneficiaries, channelled support to more than 16,000 children last year. Camfed says it encourages community members to become as involved as possible in its work, whether in selecting girls to support or in raising small grants to pay for essential items such as pencils and textbooks.

In Zambia, Camfed says it reaches more than 25,000 people, including almost 700 girls it supports in 28 schools in the rural Samfya district. The area, a two-hour flight north of Lusaka, the capital, is poor even by the standards of a country that the United Nations ranks 166th out of 177 in its human development index.

Samfya town has embraced elements of the industrialised world while remaining untouched by it in other ways. The town centre is dominated by a giant mobile phone mast, while a red-blossomed flame tree nearby has an advertisement for IBM and Hewlett-Packard computers stapled to its trunk. Next to the town’s only bank, a large blue sign shaped rather like an English churchyard tombstone points to the nearby medical centre and tells potential clients to “Know Your HIV Status”. Nationally, the infection rate among 15 – 49-year-olds is 17 per cent, which has helped cause a plunge in life expectancy to under 40.

Much of Samfya’s economic and social life is focused on the giant Lake Bangweulu, whose name means “where water meets sky” in the region’s Bemba language. In the evening, huge lorries stacked high with the day’s catch thunder by, the stench washing over pedestrians like an invigorating wave of smelling salts. At night, the lake is a city of lights cast by the Tiller lamps mounted on rafts that the fishermen use to attract their prey. Some of the men use insecticide-treated mosquito nets, hoping the fine mesh will improve their yields. It is a sign of ingenuity, adaptability and of the potential for apparently life-saving interventions to have unintended and even unwelcome consequences.

The morning after our arrival, we meet Penelop for the first time, in the company of Matildah Mwamba, Camfed’s Zambia programme manager. Penelop wears a blue skirt and blouse, mouse-tail thin tie and well-worn, clumpy black shoes. In Britain, it could pass for rebellious schoolgirl chic but any threadbareness is the result of poverty, not fashion. She speaks softly but confidently and moves with the slight awkwardness of a teenager still adjusting to a growth spurt.

Sitting on rugs on the dry open ground outside a local school, Penelop starts to sketch her life story. She was born in Zambia’s copper-producing belt, where her father was a miner. She used to have a good life, she says, until her father started spending his money on marrying other women.

When Penelop was six, her father retired and the family moved to Samfya. When she was eight, he died of an Aids-related illness. Five years later, her mother died the same way. “We had no one to look after us,” Penelop recalls.

Her aunt came to live with her and her brother but they soon moved on to the swamps in the east of the district. That spelled the end of school for Penelop as the family needed the money she could earn from trading. “When I did not sell fish in the market, there would be no food at home,” she says.

At Samfya market, in the dark, pungent building where the female fish traders battle simultaneously to win custom and to repel flies, Penelop started receiving upsetting visits from her friends. They would insult her and tell her she could earn much more if she worked as a prostitute like them. “They were wearing expensive clothes,” Penelop says. “They said: ‘If you join us, you can look like us.’ ”

Eventually, Penelop did follow them. Understandably, she doesn’t like to talk much about the details of that period, though she has at least had the comfort of testing negative for HIV since. Now she would like to work in advertising or to be a teacher.

Her other big project has been to work with a group of local women to make a film about her story. It has been submitted to next year’s Pan-African Film and Television Festival in Burkina Faso, the continent’s premier showcase. Penelop says she hopes the film will help “my fellow friends who are in the same situation”.

Once Penelop has finished talking, Camfed’s Mwamba begins to chuckle softly. She points out how many busy women walked by us while we were talking. “It was a strategic place,” she says. “You can see lots of mothers passing with loads on their heads, on their backs.”

There are many reasons why Zambian women go from girlhood to motherhood with little or no schooling in between. One is the belief that it is more beneficial for a family to find a girl a husband – and perhaps receive a dowry – than to send her to school. “It’s hard for girls,” says Cindy, another Samfya student supported by Camfed. “Because a lot of people think boys should get educated and girls should get married.”

The problem for girls has worsened because of the country’s HIV/Aids crisis. When parents die, it increases the pressure on girls to earn money to support the family. Mwamba says that bereaved families from urban areas, such as the copper belt, often migrate back to villages where they have family connections.

Educational experts say there are other, hidden problems that keep girls out of school. A lack of reliable water supply, for example, is a particular deterrent to young women who are having their periods. Girls can be more self-conscious than boys about wearing tatty clothes. As in many other parts of the world, they are held socially to a higher standard of appearance.

At one of the area’s schools, we see some of the system’s shortcomings at first hand. Sharon Chilangwa, a teacher and the mentor of almost 150 Camfed-supported girls, says 10 have dropped out since April because they became pregnant. “There are so many problems with the girls, especially pregnancies, so many falling out of school,” she says.

Camfed acknowledges these difficulties but says it believes its work can help alleviate them. It says school drop-out rates for the girls it supports are much lower than the average.

Other schooling problems in Samfya cut across the education system, affecting all children and showing why enrolment is only a starting point for improving education. Bartholomew Tembo, district education board secretary, warns that the sector needs huge investment. His officials estimate Samfya district has only about 40 per cent of the desks and less than half of the classrooms it needs.

Tembo, a thoughtful figure who balances praise for Camfed’s work with a recognition of Samfya’s problems, says the shortage of teachers is acute. Basic and high schools in the area have more than 45,000 pupils but only 805 teachers: a ratio of almost 60 to one. In a note on the wall in Tembo’s office, a letter from the provincial education officer complains that some restless teachers, who have asked for transfers, have simply stopped working.

At the end of the interview, Tembo draws heartfelt attention to the effects of the area’s unreliable electricity supply. The power has been going off for a couple of hours just after dark, cutting across prime studying time for many children, especially boarders. “Can you bear witness?” Tembo says. “It went off yesterday and came on again during the night. And then when I came into work today, it came off again.”

Back in Penelop’s old village, there is a store called Knowledge is Power that sells groceries and clothes. The cliché feels less banal in an environment in which education, as Penelop describes it, could be the difference between life and death. Camfed cannot replace her parents or those of other Aids orphans, she says, but it can give some of the financial support parents could otherwise offer.

“Life at this time is very good as compared with that time,” she says. “This time, I know that I have a future.”

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All in a good cause

Elizabeth is aged 12 and in the final year of primary school in the Samfya district of Zambia, writes Ann Cotton. She is an orphan who is hoping to continue her education but this will only be possible with financial support from Camfed.

The generosity of Financial Times readers during December will ensure that Elizabeth and other girls like her will go on to secondary school. All the money raised through this seasonal appeal will be dedicated to girls' education in Zimbabwe, Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia.

And what if Elizabeth were to leave school? She would probably marry young and become a mother to a new generation born into poverty. It makes no sense but poor families do not have the means to change this self- perpetuating status quo.

In rural areas of Africa, families rarely have sufficient resources to fund the costs of schooling. Parents and guardians are forced to choose which of their children to send to school. Boys are favoured as they have the best chance of future paid work. With the knowledge that there is no money at home and desperate to go to school, girls sometimes accept offers from men to meet school costs in return for sex.

But Camfed will meet all their costs, breaking this vicious cycle. School fees, for example, are required for desks, science and sports equipment. When a girl lives too far to walk daily to school, Camfed pays for her to go to a boarding school with all she needs including a tin trunk, towels and pocket money. Camfed meets other needs including school uniforms, which give girls from poor homes pride in their appearance and the confidence to participate fully in school life. Camfed also provides stationery and text books.

School fees and associated costs average out at £75 a year over four years. The £75 a year enables a girl to complete secondary education, to transform her life and the lives of her future children. Every family welcomes this support. Every girl values this opportunity.

Throughout this month, you can read more about our approach, how Camfed's support is administered transparently and cost-efficiently. Our website, www.camfed.org, will also introduce you to the entrepreneurs, doctors, nurses and teachers who have completed their education and are transforming their communities.

Is there any gift you will give this season that will create more happiness?

Barbara Bongo, one of the 246,525 children and young people we have helped, expressed her joy in this way: "When I heard I was to go to school, the force of gravity was really jealous because I could have jumped and touched the clouds."

Make a donation to the FT’s Camfed appeal