Education of Girls in the Developing World & How Le Dessein Helps

If women in the developing countries completed secondary education, 3 million children under the age of 5 would be saved every year.

This unfortunate statistic by the I.M.F. is just one the many plights young girls and women in general are facing in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. 

Here are some more startling facts:

1) More than 115 million 6 to 12-year old children are not in school in the developing world; three-fifths of them are girls.

2) When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children.

3) A woman with six or more years of education is more likely to seek prenatal care, assisted childbirth, and postnatal care, reducing the risk of maternal and child mortality and illness.

4) When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man.

5) Today, the U.S. invests in its future by spending about $6,800 a year per primary student on public education. In Iran the figure is $156 per student per year, in India $64, in Laos $30, and in Rwanda, $30.

6) An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent.

Young girls in developing nations have not been given the attention they highly deserve in education. Yet they have the undeniable power to help uplift their communities out of poverty through education and the earning power it will generate. 

Through fashion, art, and socially responsible actions, we’ve designed a way to get involved. Le Dessein is a fashion line aimed at funding the education of underprivileged girls around the world by featuring their designs on our fashion. We then contribute 25% of our proceeds to the girls’ yearly school tuition.

The nature of our effort is not just monetary – our ultimate vision is to create independence and freedom through the empowerment of our girls. A critical component of this whole vision being self esteem – we were adamant on making sure that our girls would be intimately tied to the creation of the designs which would end up on garments. The success of their artistic journey through their participation and engagement would create a profound sense of OWNERSHIP, which is essential in affecting one’s self-esteem. Indeed, we wanted to demark ourselves from the traditional form of aid towards developing countries, which has consisted mainly of charity, and instead have “ownership” be the driving factor in maintaining this self-sustaining endeavor.

Creating an impact in these young girls’ lives will take collective effort from various committed parties. Inculcating the notion of “Ownership” though noble, can be an arduous task and required collaboration. And we’ve had the fortune and pleasure of being aligned with the More Than Me Foundation – “The More Than Me Foundation is on a mission to make sure education and opportunity, not exploitation and poverty, define the lives of the most vulnerable girls from the West Point Slum of Liberia.” Its motto is: “When she graduates, she will decide what comes next for her life.”

Indeed, for our girls, this is about reclaiming and redefining their own sense of self. For far too long, girls and women from the developing world have been subjected to a strongly patriarchal society – a society where their “value” was unilaterally decided by men – So “Ownership” to us is simply the final destination defined by an effort that consists of arming our girls and presenting them with opportunities susceptible to make this journey a worthy one.

Our fashion linehiis elegant and sophisticated and aims at serving a market that for too long has had to sacrifice quality and design for purpose and mission.

Learn more about Le Dessein. 

ERIC COLY

@Le_Dessein

Eric is the founder and CEO of Le Dessien. Eric grew up in Dakar, Senegal, where he was influenced by his mother's passion, drive, and fashion sense at a young age. His mother would eventually inspire him to start Le Dessein. He attended UCLA Business School and began his career in investment banking.

The Peace Corps in Rwanda, Part 2

A Peace Corps Christmas in Rwanda

In my last update, I talked a bit about the path that led me to the Peace Corps and the basics of the three-month training program that was my day-to-day life. For a while, most of that remained unchanged. After returning from visiting my final site outside Nyungwe National Park, I was back to the grind of daily Kinyarwanda lessons; classroom management sessions, and any other miscellaneous bit of training that the Peace Corps deemed necessary for its education volunteers.

I mentioned in my first post how the community-based training program, while undeniably effective when it comes to integration and language acquisition, can quickly leave you desperate for just a small taste of the familiar. As soon as we had the chance, we all embraced that ideal wholeheartedly with the help of surprise birthday parties, pumpkin carving for Halloween, a massive collaborative Thanksgiving dinner, and most recently coming back together for Christmas and New Year’s celebrations.

Admittedly, some of the days have felt long and drawn out, but it’s amazing how fast the weeks have flown by. As I write this, my training has finished and I have been officially sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. After three months of training as a group, we are now scattered around the country in the communities that we will be working in for the next two years. The whole transition is a somewhat bittersweet. While I’m experiencing a freedom that I haven’t had for what seems like an eternity, it also means separating myself from the people, both in my host family and training group, that I’ve grown close to over the past months. In addition, as an education volunteer, I was installed on site during the holiday break. This meant that for a while there was little for me to do but hang out in the school offices or walk around and introduce myself (a bit of a challenge since most of the people in the community assume, at first glance, that I’m the same volunteer that has been working here the past two years).

On top of the conflicts that come from simultaneous feelings of freedom, boredom, and missing friends, I’ve been finding that my site is in an unusual limbo of classic Peace Corps life and unexpected luxury. I can start my day with a bucket bath and hand washing a load of laundry, followed by browsing the web in my school’s modern offices. I can then head up a partially eroded hillside staircase past a couple troops of baboons and struggle to light a charcoal stove in order to cook dinner. I can lounge in my tile-floored house and watch a movie, only to be woken up in the middle of night to chase mice out of the room.

To be clear, none of these are meant as complaints; just the opposite. I was all set to be handling all these things and more, but my assignment here is most definitely not what I was expecting from the Peace Corps (in the best possible way). Just walking around the campus is an experience in itself, with forested hills stretching into the distance as far as the eye can see. 

I cannot wait to get started with my work here, although that still seems to be a long way off. While the semester for the rest of my colleagues started last week, I’m here to teach at a school for conservation and environmental management that has the students completing internships around the country for their first month. As a result, I’ve got a nice, long, and quite possibly cabin fever-inducing chunk of time off before I can begin teaching in February.

Thankfully, I’ve been able to stave off boredom by traveling for the holidays, visiting friends and getting to see a bit more of Rwanda in the process. The festivities made it a little more like home with the help of cheap Christmas decorations bought in the capital, a tiny plastic tree, and a can or two of white foam marketed as ‘fake snow’ (a surprisingly good substitute for a white Christmas, once you get past the lingering soap smell in the air). But now the holidays have come and gone and everyone is getting to work for the New Year, so it’s back to site for me. With any luck I’ll be able to find some projects to pass the time and supply me with some good stories moving forward.

READ SCOTT'S FIRST UPDATE ON THE PEACE CORPS IN RWANDA.

 

SCOTT JENKINS

Scott Jenkins grew up in Ridgewood, NJ and graduated from NYU in 2012 with a degree in Anthropology and Linguistics. His passion for travel, adventure, and helping others led him to apply to the Peace Corps in September of 2012. He was invited to teach in Rwanda, where he is currently serving for the next two years.