The Girls’ Education Programme of the FDC (Community Development Foundation) has for eight years benefited more than 10,000 girls, through incentives for schooling and professional training. Since it was created eight years ago, the programme has granted almost 150 scholarships in Mozambique and abroad.

The FDC (Community Development Foundation) is commemorating the 10th anniversary of its creation, and the Girls’ Education Programme is one of many activities that the institution has been undertaking in six provinces of our country.

This programme involves the construction of infrastructures and the supply of school equipment. The training of teachers in questions of gender and development should be stressed.

The FDC (Community Development Foundation) designed this programme with the objective of contributing to the expansion of the school network, improving access to school particularly for girls, including making scholarships available, training teachers, reducing drop-out rates, and ensuring greater community participation in the life of the school.

For the FDC, education is the basis for the development of any country. Education provides access to knowledge, to employment and to the world. In Mozambique, girls in particular, and women in general, are the people least privileged in education.

One notes that the poorest households, when they lack the financial capacity to send all their children to school, always choose to send their sons who guarantee the future of the household.

The FDC (Community Development Foundation) established its Girls’ Education Programme as from 1996/97, with the general objective of supporting girls by providing incentives for their schooling and professional training.

Since then, the programme has been gradually implemented in the following places:

  •  Metuge, Cabo Delgado province
  •  Lichinga, Niassa province
  •  Morrumbala, Zambézia province
  •  Gondola, Manica province
  •  Maputo City

In these places the following have been built:

  •  17 schools
  •  1 sports field with bathrooms
  •  1 water tank
  •  1 social centre
  •  2 wells
  •  10 improved latrines
  •  4 buildings
  •  2 sheds for extra-curricular activities

A school was also rehabilitated.

Then following were supplied for these infrastructures:

  •  2,745 double desks
  •  34 desks for teachers
  •  31 chairs for teachers
  •  30 benches

Furthermore, 297 teachers were trained in questions of gender and development.

As for scholarships, the following were granted:

  •  56 for girls with basic training in the areas of
      agriculture and livestock, community instructors
      and trade at ADPP Maputo;
  •  17 for girls at IMEP and at ISPU for courses in
      Accountancy, Legal Sciences and Company
      Administration and Management;
  •  24 for girls in several areas of higher training
      in universities in South Africa, Portugal,
      United States, Brazil, Britain and Zimbabwe;
  •  5 for girls with masters degrees in various areas;
  •  2 for girls in the Quelimane Health Institute;
  •  3 for girls on the Pemba Mother and Child Health
      course;
  •  4 for girls to attend the ADPP Training Centre
      at Bilibiza;
  •  30 for girls to be sent to South Africa for a six month
      course in Social Sciences.