Camfed founder and executive director Ann Cotton is among a group of leaders in international development who were invited to contribute to the UN Chronicle’s current issue assessing the world’s progress on achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Read her article on the importance of educating girls and women at the UN Chronicle’s website.

By Yakubu Memuna and Yahaya Huzeifa

“My husband looked at me as if I were a stranger and said, ‘Why should an illiterate woman like you be my wife? Go back to where you came from.’” I was 12 years old when my father decided to pull me out of school and give me up for marriage to the son of one of his friends. In marrying me off, he knew that he would receive a bride price, and that he would no longer be financially responsible for me.

My grandmother took me to a different community in an effort to protect me. For two years, all of my family members tried to convince my father that I was too young to marry, but my father married me off anyway, at the age of 14.

Within five years, I gave birth to three children. When I was 20 years old, my husband took a second wife, leaving me and my children to fend for ourselves. My children were ages two, three, and five. (more…)

Camfed is one of eight charities that is collaborating with the Guardian in the exciting new Guardian Development Journalism Competition, which launches on March 10, 2008.

The competition is open to UK-based students and freelance journalists with an interest in looking behind the headlines and investigating why 2.7 billion people around the world are still living in poverty. (more…)

When Simon Edwards, a corporate finance director for Evolution Securities in London, decided to climb Mt. Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Americas, his friends and associates were impressed with his ambition. Simon decided to capitalize on that—in an entirely virtuous way—by asking them to support his efforts by donating money to Camfed.

Simon’s interest in Camfed’s work stems from a personal connection to Tanzania, one of the countries where Camfed works. After university, he spent three months there working on an environmental project. He returned recently on business, 15 years later. “We drove through the countryside, and it struck me how little Tanzania has developed in the 15 years since I was there,” he says. “Tanzania has a place in my heart, so I wanted to do something to help.”

Education, he thought, would be the best way to create lasting change. “I believe that charity ought to create a virtuous cycle,” he says. “I like the idea that education feeds off itself. Countries with an educated population develop the capacity to help themselves.”

On January 21, Simon achieved what he had set out to accomplish: he reached the 22,840-foot summit of Mt. Aconcagua, one of three climbers in his original group of eight. “It was such a relief,” he says. “I broke down in tears at the top. I was ill two days before and didn’t think I was going to make it.”

Through his employer, Evolution Securities, as well as through an email he sent to 2,500 contacts soliciting donations for Camfed, Simon was able to raise £12,000—enough to fund an entire secondary school education for 40 girls. He was pleased by the response he received, but he’s still not entirely satisfied. “Now that I’ve made it back alive,” he says, “I plan to chase down a few more people.”

If you are inspired by Simon’s story, please give the gift of education to a child in Africa. Make a secure online donation today.

For more ideas on how to fundraise for Camfed, visit our get involved section.

In many sub-Saharan African countries, judicial systems and traditional courts still fail to recognize domestic violence as a crime. Violence may be considered an appropriate response if a wife argues with her husband, fails to have food ready at meal time, or goes out without her husband’s permission. Last November, Camfed teamed up with Padare, an organization in Zimbabwe partnering with men to tackle the imbalance in relationships that leads to violence against women. Together, Camfed and Padare are engaging community leaders and young men in workshops about the need to identify and address barriers to women’s equality.

Here, Usher Mande, who coordinates the partnership between Camfed and Padare talks about how the two organizations are creating a safe space where men can discuss gender roles.

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This week Humankindmedia.org, a blog that explores exciting initiatives for social change around the world, features a story about Camfed’s origins, and the ripple effect of our collaborative, locally driven model, as embodied by one of our first beneficiaries, human rights lawyer Fiona Muchembere.

Read the full story at Humankindmedia.org.