Author Lisa Grainger spent three months travelling through Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa and Botswana, collecting stories that have been passed down by generations of gogos, or grandmothers. The result, Stories Gogo Told Me (Penguin, 2008), is a collection of 40 traditional African tales that Lisa gathered from village storytellers, farmers, and rural teachers. On her journey, she met some of the girls Camfed is supporting through school.

“Having taken the stories from villages, it didn’t feel right to profit myself, so I decided to donate proceeds from the book to Camfed,” explains Lisa, who grew up in Zimbabwe. “Camfed’s work appealed to me because I had seen firsthand how much money went directly to educating girls in Africa.”

Lisa visited a rural school in Zimbabwe and met 56 girls whose education is being funded by Camfed. She also met two young women who, with Camfed’s support, are studying social sciences at university in order to help their own communities. Every one of them said that without Camfed, they would not have been educated. “None of these girls had ever seen a book of traditional African stories, and they all begged me for a copy,” says Lisa. “I know that there are hundreds more girls across Africa who will benefit if the book sells.”

Camfed would like to thank Lisa enormously for her generosity, and to urge supporters to buy this wonderful and evocative book.

Stories Gogo Told Me can be pre-ordered in the U.S. for December delivery at Amazon.com.

Listen to an interview with Lisa Grainger on BBC Radio 4

Sixteen finalists have been chosen from the 400 journalists who entered the Guardian newspaper’s Development Journalism Competition.

Two of these finalists will now get the chance to visit Camfed’s work in Zambia and Tanzania. Their names will be announced on August 1st, and their articles will appear in the Guardian in November 2008.

Camfed is one of eight charities collaborating with the Guardian in this ground-breaking competition, which challenges amateur and freelance journalists to look behind the headlines and investigate why 2.7 billion people around the world are still living in poverty. (more…)

by Vicky Anning, Writer-in-Residence

A team of 16 runners braved wind and rain to take part in the British 10K London Run on Sunday, July 6 for Camfed. So far the intrepid team has raised more than £11,000 for girls in Africa, which is enough to buy 1,466 pairs of school shoes.

A pair of sturdy school shoes costs just £7.50, but this is beyond the reach of many families in the rural areas of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana and Tanzania where Camfed works. This can effectively deny girls the chance of an education – because shoes are a requirement for children to go to school. (more…)

Leading Camfed alumna Fiona Muchembere features in a thought-provoking interview about social entrepreneurship with BBC World Service presenter Peter Day.

Interviewed at the 2008 Skoll World Forum at Oxford University, Fiona talks about the power of education to transform lives and strengthen communities. With the support of Camfed, which was founded by social entrepreneur Ann Cotton in 1993, Fiona was the first girl in her rural community in Zimbabwe to attend university. After graduating as a lawyer, Fiona is now in a position to support 22 members of her family through school. (more…)

(delivered at the launch event for the Financial Times 2007 seasonal appeal)

At the age of 13, when I had just completed my first year of secondary school education, my father lost his job as a general hand at a meat processing plant in the capital of Zimbabwe, Harare. Every year from that point on, my family and I struggled to scrape together enough money to ensure that I could stay in school. My parents were barely able to raise the $42 in annual school fees for my second year of secondary school, so I had to work to pay for notebooks, pens and other school materials. On weekends, I woke up at 4:30 am to travel from village to village selling vegetables. I would get back home around 9:00 am, and then go to the local market to continue selling vegetables for up to eight hours a day. Despite all this effort, I only earned the equivalent of 30 cents a day. (more…)

Fiona Muchembere joined global leaders, including President Carter, Jeff Skoll and Al Gore and at the Skoll World Forum at Oxford University from March 26 to 28. As the first girl from her rural community in Zimbabwe to attend university as well as the first to become a lawyer, Fiona was able to share with the audience her experience of breaking through the barriers of poverty to set a new precedent for children and young people in rural communities. Fiona was supported through her education by Camfed, and today she holds a managerial position supporting Cama (Camfed’s growing alumnae organization) across four countries of Africa.

Fiona challenged the idea that girls’ exclusion from education is an expression of culture. “In Africa we value education,” Fiona told her audience and fellow panelists. “Families are proud of their children – both boys and girls –who receive further education, especially in the rural areas. But the context of chronic poverty and AIDS has masked this cultural value.” Fiona described how the economic crisis in Zimbabwe is making it increasingly difficult for families to be able to afford to send their girls to school. As education costs rise, more and more girls are dropping out of school and migrating to urban areas or neighbouring countries where they are vulnerable to sexual exploitation or abuse which can lead to HIV/AIDS.

“Poverty is robbing children of the right to education despite the high value it has within our culture,” she continued. Fiona is supporting 22 members of her immediate and extended family through school. Consequently, she and other educated young women in Zimbabwe are increasingly regarded as leaders by their communities. “Our families often ask us, ‘You are the ones that went to school–what should we do in this situation?’” she said.

With Fiona and her fellow Cama members sending almost 50,000 girls to school this year, a growing number of young women in rural Africa will be able to answer that question with confidence.

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