The word all over campus last week was WISER. From barbecues and bake sales to dance night at Shooters, you would have to be living under a rock to have missed WISER Week-the push to raise awareness and money for the Women's Institute of Secondary Education and Research, Muhuru Bay, Kenya's first all-girl's secondary boarding school.
By the end of the week, hundreds of enthusiastic students sported WISER T-shirts. However, as WISER cofounder and Associate Professor Sherryl Broverman pointed out, the challenge is to get everyone wearing those T-shirts to understand what it is WISER does. The week raised incredible awareness and funds, but WISER is intended to be much more than a fundraising group.
Unlike a number of campus fundraisers for global causes, the WISER organizers really know their stuff. The vision, mission statement and business plan the group has written are some of the most comprehensive education aid proposals out there.
As Duke students, though, it is up to us to look beyond the fundraising pitch to really examine the tough development issues WISER raises. A major question to ask is whether the school can really get at the root of girls' education problems in Kenya.
In general, there are two approaches to development: You can create something new or attempt to reform the system that's already in place. Especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, working within the existing system is extremely daunting. Ridiculous bureaucracy and lacking infrastructure can slow even the worthiest projects; endemic corruption and nepotism can drain entire budgets. With vision and resources, however, you can avoid these pitfalls and start from scratch.
The problem is that creating something new rarely gets at the root of the problem-it works around it. UNICEF studies have shown that only 40 percent of both males and females of secondary school age in Kenya are currently enrolled. When it comes to attendance, only 12 percent of males and 13 percent of females actually make it to school. Before building new private schools, it seems important to figure out what the barriers stopping students of both genders from getting to school now are.
Duke student researchers conducted an exhaustive study of why females are not succeeding in Muhuru Bay, concluding that a lack of financial support, damaging male teacher-female student dynamics, relationships between male and female students and low self-confidence among the girls were all contributing factors. For the 30 students who will graduate from WISER each year, the all-girls' boarding school will boost self-confidence during the school day and provide women teachers as role models.
WISER deserves credit for involving large numbers of local teachers, administrators and government officials on their board of directors. Yet, if right now in Muhuru Bay parents will not allow their girl children to attend school, secondary-school administrators are corrupt and there is no infrastructure connecting the village with the rest of Kenya, a fancy new boarding school will not fully address the problem.
Nor does it feel right to exclude the nearly 2,000 Muhuru Bay secondary school-aged girls not lucky enough to receive WISER scholarships and abandon them in the current failing system-or worse yet, in no school at all. One has to wonder if all the money being spent on WISER could be put to use instituting teacher training programs to support qualified teachers for all girls in the region, not just the chosen 120.
These are not easy questions. In Muhuru Bay, not a single girl has graduated from secondary school in 19 years. Beginning next year when WISER opens, this will change. In the meantime, though, we can't lose sight of those not directly benefiting from the new school; to do so would create resentment and drive the community apart instead of uniting it.
Ideally the school will serve as a model and a locus for community development. Perhaps some of the new graduates can go on to college and eventually come back to Muhuru Bay as women teachers themselves. The proposed school is designed to be far more than a collection of classrooms-it will also include a technology lab, health clinic and microfinance outlet. The WISER philosophy is that to make a sustainable difference, development must begin at the grassroots level. If the model works, organization members say, then they will somehow figure out how to broaden the scope of their project.
"The bottom line is that education is not a privilege, but a right," WISER cofounder Andy Cunningham emphasized. I couldn't agree more. But as even WISER leaders themselves recognize, donating a lot of money is not going to remedy the complex education and development problems the region faces. Wearing WISER T-shirts enthusiastically is great, but as Duke and its students support the school, we must continue to ask the tough questions about its long-term impact.
David Fiocco is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Monday.
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