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The Greatest Force
WorldPulse
Extracted from Issue 2, November 2005

http://www.worldpulsemagazine.com/

"Come is the day when our voices can be heard from the top, producing an echo that awakens all those who are asleep."

"When I look back and celebrate what I did, I still come face to face with girls who are calling for help. Their voices echo from all over Africa, yearning for the opportunity to access education and obtain freedom." - Judith Kumire

Judith Kumire is the Director of The Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED) Zimbabwe, which supports tens of thousands of girls to go to school in Zimbabwe.

These are the stories of some of her former students:

• Before I received my secondary education, I feared that life would bind me and make me a slave. My hope was rekindled by my education; it transformed me into viewing life from a different perspective. It taught me to be myself and to have power over my life.
  - Yvonne Kapenzi runs a successful business and is the first young woman in her community ever to secure a loan from a commercial bank
  
  
• To me, education is a weapon against poverty. I grew up in a society where it is said that the only course a woman could pass is marriage. I come from a family where there is no one qualified for a professional job, where there is no lawyer. I am actually their pioneer. And in a community where there is no lawyer, I have introduced diversity. There are still areas in which I feel the law is repressive to women. I want to work for a situation in which everyone is able to claim their right through the law.
  - Fiona Muchembere, now a degreed lawyer in Zimbabwe
  
  
• I am growing up in mind and in business. Now I have touched the stars and I am not going to give up till reach the moon.
  Siphelani Chomuzinda started her own poultry business. She advises and supports other young women in her community who are starting their own businesses.
  
  
• Today, when looking to the past, it seems like a dream, but that was the reality - and because of it, right now I can stand in front of people and encourage them so that they too can transform their lives.
  - Patricia Mangoma, now co-ordinates a micro-finance scheme to enable school dropouts around Zimbabwe to start their own business
  
  
• I was going to school wearing the barmu-barmu skirt, which my mother exchanged for groundnuts, and I was also going to school bare foot. One of my classmates, who came from a rich family, gave me her sandals, and the first day I started wearing them, the whole class clapped their hands for me. I was very intelligent in class, but because of a lack of decent clothes, I was too shy to stand up and speak.
  When my father passed away during the drought, there was nothing to eat at home or to take to school. I thought of going home, and this was when CAMFED provided me with a uniform and porridge at school. I will never forget it.
  After school I received training on cutting and designing and I came back to the community to train other girls and young women. At first, the young women were not coming for the training, because their parents thought the girls would become prostitutes. But I continued to motivate the parents of the girls.
  Now we have big meetings in the community and all the people come. The attitudes of the people in the community have really changed, and they now want to be involved in all the activities. I have motivated the community to believe in girls' education and pay school fees for their children.
  - Rudo Gore leads a large growing team of young women in Nyaminyami who are working to tackle poverty and develop their communities
  
  
• I used to go to school barefoot, with my face full of hunger. If only I get the chance, I will do something great.
  - Runyararo Mashingaidze wrote this in a letter to CAMFED in 1993. Now she is a doctor working at Harare General Hospital
  
  
• A number of my friends slept with "sugar daddies" in exchange for cash to remain in school. Many of them were orphaned and living with aged and poor grandparents after their parents died of AIDS.
  I do not blame them for getting desperate, for none of us wants to be excluded. They took the shortest possible route to be included in the system, dangerous as it was. They wanted an education and to be recognised because of it - to be looked up to by their communities. They wanted their families to be proud of them when they got a degree or when they came back to work in local clinics as nurses.
  If only they had been as lucky as I was, they would be alive today. If only they had got into school and remained, they would not have become so desperate. My friends would have turned down the sugar daddies as I did. It would be so much easier for the girls to protect themselves if they just had the opportunity to go to school.
  - Angeline Mugwendere, Director of CAMA (The CAMFED Association), which is uniting young women across Africa and calling for all girls to be given their right to education. These girls are leading the efforts to reach other girls and have multiplied from 32 girls to 150,000 across Zambia, Ghana and Zimbabwe
  
  
• I was the first child in a family of six. We sometimes slept without eating anything and had sacks as blankets. Our house was a shanty house, concrete floor, no doors, no furniture. One day, the pupils in my class were taught about shantytowns, and later on I was surprised to find our yard flooded with my schoolmates, laughing. They had come to look at our house as a good example of a shanty house. I was regarded as an outcast.
  Only later, when I was doing my fieldwork as a district co-ordinator, did I realise that my experiences were training for me. I have become so committed to helping other people in situations like mine.
  I am currently involved in counselling abused children, since I was once a victim myself. My first aim is to have perpetrators behind bars. And with the support from the police, ten cases of abuse have recently been reported, investigations made, and people arrested and remanded to custody.
  It is on everyone's lips now in Chikomba that children need a high level of protection from abusers. This is a fact that is constantly reinforced by Assistant Inspector Chikwababa. He assists us a lot and even goes beyond his job description. He is committed to helping children not only in the district but also across the country.
  I do promise that I will do my best to make Chikomba a better place for children to grow up than it was for me.
  - Charity Masango, works with police and other local authorities to help children in Chikomba
  
  
• I have a strong zeal to help other girls go to school. I understand the joy that was brought to my family and this is I want to do for other girls and their families. I know that the energy that my colleagues, and I give out is so life giving. I will work flat out to see our intentions through.
  - Winnie Farao has just graduated from the University of Zimbabwe with a first class degree in Psychology

There had been 15 years in my chiefdom with no chief until I was appointed. There was a lot of excitement and expectation from the people. I visited each family and collected information. My findings were shocking. Parents were dying, and there were many child-headed households. There was evidence of great poverty.

I realised that people were living in these intolerable situations without knowing where to go for advice. They felt chiefs were too big to talk to. In my community we can shake hands with one another. I have regular meetings with my community where we discuss issues of concern.

Girls should not be afraid in their community. I do not tolerate any form of abuse and have caused seven men to go to jail for abusing girls. I also appointed a woman assessor to the chief's court. Now, girls can share with other women and many cases are surfacing.

I have seen how the poor and disadvantaged are always trampled upon and exploited. An education gives people confidence and a belief in self. Girls without education are like refugees in their own Motherland. They marry in darkness expecting their husbands to look after them, but when a husband loses his job, he has nothing to offer and he chases his wife away.

Education is our prosperity. The battle against poverty can never be won until all our girls are in school.
- Chief Mutekedza is a senior traditional leader in Zimbabwe

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