Education and Spiral Staircases

My Beloved-Blog-Following-SIDers!
After a short absence last week I'm baa-aack! And posting promptly after this week's SID activity!

Tonight's SID meeting was all about education in development. We were honored with visitors from Vittana, an organization that does Kiva-like loans but to help students in developing nations go to school, and InterACT (someone correct me if that's the wrong name), an org that does ACT and college prep here in Provo/Orem.

Lesa Young, our ONE Campus Leader, announced the new ONE Agricultural campaign. Congress is considering cutting the budget for the current fiscal year, putting agriculture at a big risk. ONE is trying to prevent this from happening by appealing to Congress to "help farmers around the world earn their way out of poverty for the long term by committing $1.3 billion to smart agriculture programs" (one.org). Next week at 7pm we'll be writing letters to our representatives in Congress, asking for their support. Please come and bring a can of food, too! If you're interested, you can read more about the campaign by checking out the ONE blog. You can also sign the ONE petition right now and help reach ONE's goal of 20,000 signers.

For the remainder of the meeting we took a mini field trip to the spiral staircase in the JFSB to do an education simulation activity with the fabulous Joan Dixon. Everyone was given a card, pink for girls, blue for boys (yes, we buy into gender stereotypes here at SID), with a number on it. Rachel (not me Rachel, SID President Rachel) and Joan shared stats about education statistics in Mali with us as a club as with fewer and fewer students were invited to move up to each subsequent step in education. While 91% of us made it to Primary School (and even then, probably still receiving a rather questionable education), only 1 of the 40ish participants made it to the tertiary level of education, where all of us BYU students are right now. We discussed some of the struggles that are involved in going to school in Mali (lack of money to pay school fees, being needed to work at home, language issues, hitting puberty, a lack of access to schools, school curriculum which lacks relevancy to local conditions, etc. to name but a few) and shared stories about education problems different SID members had seen both here in the US as well as different developing countries we've visited.

At one point, Joan asked the one SIDer who made it to the top of the staircase, representing the small portion of Malians who are able to achieve a higher education, what he planned to do with his education. The student replied that he wasn't sure, maybe he'd just stay in the US where he'd obtained his Masters and his PhD. While that happens a lot, resulting in severe brain drain, I thought I'd share with all you dedicated blog followers, the story of a Malian who beat the odds and obtained as Masters in Public Policy (here at BYU of all places!) and is doing anything but just staying in the US.

Meet my friend Yeah Samaké (pronounced Yay Sa-ma-kay).

Yeah was born in Ouelessebougou, Mali, the 8th child in a family of 18 children. Even though they had little money it was incredibly important to Yeah's father that all of his children go to school, whatever the costs. He believed that in giving his children each an education he could give them the means to break the cycle of poverty that had stricken both their family and their town for so long.

His father was right.

I first heard about Yeah while on an internship in Mali with the Ouelessebougou Alliance. He had just been elected mayor of Ouelessebougou and the 44 surrounding villages and everyone was excited about it. "He's Mali's Obama!" my co-workers told me. Everyone went on and on about how wonderful he was, about how he'd been educated in the US and now ran an NGO called Mali Rising, helping to build schools in Mali. Now he was mayor and he was going to change the way things were done. He was their promise for a better tomorrow, a change they really could believe in. When I was told he was going to be in town and wanted to meet me and my two other fellow BYU interns, I initially thought, "Oh great, how can this man possibly live up to all this talk?" As time after time our appointments with the infamous Yeah Samaké fell through I began to joke that "Obamaké" was merely a conspiracy theory my co-workers had invented to play a trick on me. "You'll meet him," my friend N'Faly assured me. "If Samaké says he'll meet you then he will meet you." When I finally did meet him, my second to last day in Ouelessebougou, I was completely blown away. None of the hype I'd heard came even close to capturing Yeah Samaké. Even now that we're friends I'm still amazed every time I hear him speak. "Inspiring" perhaps is the best word I can think of in describing the man. Yeah is a man who loves his country and has worked his whole life towards making it a better place. He is an incredible example of someone who has beaten the odds, obtained a good education and is now using it to lift his people out of poverty, serving them with all his heart, mind and strength. Serving his hometown and region isn't enough for Yeah, he has decided to run for President in Mali's 2012 presidential elections--I pray that he will win.

Yeah Samaké was recently featured in the BYU Magazine--check out the story if you want to learn more.


That's all for now friends!
Much love,
Ama Rachel