Photo story: NGO BWEF in Burkina Faso.

Investing in higher education in the Sahel region. 

 

By Frederick Eckhard, President of NGO  Burkina Women´s Education Fund (BWEF) and former Spokesperson of Koki Annan.  

How the story of BWEF begins

When I retired as Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Spokesperson in 2005, my wife Kathryn, who is a Scot, proposed that we move to Brittany, in northwest France, where the weather is a bit like Scotland-windy, rainy, changeable—but nicer. We found a dream house with a view of the sea. I thought I was in Paradise.But I developed this gnawing feeling that it was time to give something back.

 And, as so often is the case, circumstance came into play. The woman we bought our house from, Gilberte Saint Cast, had started a humanitarian organization about ten years ago to help girls in need in Burkina Faso. (For the story, as I described it in an Op-Ed in the International Herald Tribune.

I traveled with Gilberte and her husband to Burkina Faso in 2009 and 2010, each time for a couple of weeks. What struck me most was, yes, these were among the poorest people on earth, but they were brimming with optimism and ready to work hard.

Girls face the same challenges in Burkina Faso as in many other parts of the world, but the Government is striving to meet a target set by my former boss, Kofi Annan, in his Millennium Development Goals—namely equal educational opportunity for boys and girls. A little financial push from Gilberte was helping about 45 girls finish secondary school or get training in vocational school.