Results: Since 1993, CAMFED’s innovative education programs in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania and Malawi have directly supported more than 3.3 million students to attend primary and secondary school, and nearly 5.7 million children have benefited from an improved learning environment at 6,220 rural partner schools. CAMFED has trained 12,404 Teacher Mentors and community members to look after the needs of vulnerable children at the partner schools and in their communities. CAMFED’s alumnae association, CAMA, now has over 138,000 members across Africa.
In delivering on our core mission, we have adapted a transformative approach that builds on our proven model of support for girls' education, capitalizes on the extraordinary opportunity represented by the CAMA network, and positions CAMFED as a benchmark for scaling high impact, sustainable development solutions. We are prioritizing three strategies: unlocking new resources for girls' education, unleashing new potential through young women's leadership, and igniting new action to accelerate change.
Target demographics: Girls and young women in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa
Direct beneficiaries per year: In 2018, we supported 52,713 primary school students (girls and boys) and 64,767 secondary school girls to access education and stay in school in a supportive learning environment. Through our community initiatives, we supported an additional 1,051,466 vulnerable children to stay in school. We also supported 138,018 young women through CAMA, our CAMFED alumnae network, who in turn supported vulnerable girls in their communities, completing the virtuous cycle of support.
Geographic areas served: Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Programs: CAMFED begins with the poorest, most marginalized girl – by looking out at her world and, step by step, dismantling the obstacles in her way so that she can move forward to become a fully empowered global citizen. She is our ‘client’, and we strive to build her sense of entitlement as well as her access to the rights and opportunities that should be the birthright of every 21st century child. CAMFED focuses on improving girls’ educational access, experience and achievements in tandem with developing young women’s confidence, agency and leadership. The result is a virtuous cycle, through which the investment in girls’ education pays ever-increasing dividends in the activism of educated young women, which in turn raises girls’ aspirations and success. CAMFED invests at every stage of this cycle to enable a critical mass of girls to complete school and become entrepreneurs and leaders within their communities. This investment incorporates: (1) a comprehensive support system at community level, (2) interventions to enable a critical mass of girls to progress through secondary school, (3) provision of training in financial literacy and business skills to young women at the point of leaving school to enable their successful transition to a secure livelihood, and (4) the promotion of young women’s leadership.
