Boko Haram and the other 34 million kids

Posted: May 28th, 2014 | Author: Michael Goldstein | | No Comments »

From Inc Magazine:

This month, Inc. named Bridge International Academies to our list of Most Audacious Companies in the World. Founded by U.S. entrepreneurs Shannon May and Jay Kimmelman, the for-profit company aims to end world poverty by building and operating schools that will ultimately serve 10 million students across the developing world. Shortly after our article went to press, the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped more than 300 girls from a state school in Nigeria–a country where Bridge International had announced plans to begin operations next year. We asked May whether the event had affected the company’s plans. May, who responded by email, says she is more determined than ever to bring education to the African nation:

Shannon writes:

Boko Haram. Since April, almost everyone knows the name, and many people have stood up to ask the Nigerian government what they have done to “bring back our girls.” I am in Nigeria as I write this, with my two girls. Chloe is 3 years old. Julia is 2 months. I am here to enable more girls and boys living in poor villages, towns, and cities across Nigeria to go to great, safe schools, democratizing the right to succeed. Is this a bad time for Bridge International Academies to start operations in Nigeria? No. It is with even greater urgency that we are starting our operations here.

Bridge will launch in Lagos. Shannon explains:

While Boko Haram is currently attacking the future of the three million children who live in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe State, the future of the 34 million children across Nigeria living in poverty is also at risk.

Even without terrorists burning down schools in the central and southern parts of Nigeria, millions of children are not being educated.

Nigeria has the most out-of-school children of any single country–10.5 million. And 20 percent of children are not even expected to enroll in primary school. Tragically, even those who sit in a classroom are not learning. The literacy gap between rich and poor Nigerians is more than 50 percentage points.

UNESCO has given a dire prognosis for poor girls in Nigeria: unless something drastic is done to change the current education situation, it will take 70 years for all poor girls in Nigeria to become literate. That is another three generations lost. Another three generations that will live in abject poverty, disgruntled and angry.

We must work together to “bring back our girls” from Chibok. But we must also work together to change the future of the millions of girls in Nigeria who–if we don’t act drastically–we will have lost to the world Boko Haram wants to create, not through their kidnapping by terrorists, but through our neglect of their lives in need.

Read the whole thing here.