(from www.wikipedia.com:)
Togo, officially the Togolese Republic, is a country in West Africa bordering Ghana in the west, Benin in the east and Burkina Faso in the north. In the south, it has a short Gulf of Guinea coast, on which the capital Lomé is located.
Its official language is French and it received its independence from France on April 27, 1960 (although it was originally settled by the Portuguese and then the Germans, eventually becoming a UN Trust Territory until it was under the French Union).
In the north, the land is characterized by a gently rolling savannah. The center of the country is hilly. The southern plateau reaches a coastal plain with extensive lagoons and marshes. The land area is 56,785 km² (21,925 square miles), with an average population density of 98 people per square kilometer (253 people per square mile). In 1914 it changed from Togoland to Togo Moubarikou.
Visit the official Togolese government website here.
What I Do: Girls Education and Empowerment
(From the official Peace Corps invitation)
Job Title: Community Girls Education Extension Agent
Dates of Service: December 06, 2007 – December 5, 2009
Training In Country: September 22nd, 2007 – December 5, 2007
“As a GEE Volunteer, you will be engaged in two sorts of education. One is technical education, in formal (school) and non-formal (e.g. apprenticeships, literacy classes) programs in which girls can acquire skills that will enable them to become economically and professionally self-sufficient. The other is personal education (e.g. life skills, health, rights) that will enable girls to enhance their lives and in many cases even save them.”
Primary Duties:
1. Girls (Students or apprentices) together with boys (students or apprentices) will increase their knowledge and will develop personal skills that contribute to their successful completion of school or professional formation and will be empowered to participate in their communities.
2. Formal and non-formal educators will create positive environments for the promotion of girls’ education in collaboration with boys;
3. Organizations will contribute to the development of their community through the promotion of education and empowerment of girls in collaboration with boys and the development of financial and human resources.
4. The communities and community based organizations will be actively engaged in the campaign to increase the enrollment rate and retention (continued enrollment) of girls in schools and apprenticeship centers. Communities will use local and external resources to support gender equity in families, community organizations, schools and cooperative groups.
As a Community Girls’ Education Agent you will be assigned to a Regional Education Inspection Office, which will provide global supervision and assist you in identifying appropriate teachers to serve as counterparts in the development of extra-curricular as well as community outreach activities.
During your first weeks of service you will conduct a community assessment using the tools of PACA (Participatory Analysis for Community Action) in the school(s) , apprenticeship centers, and in the community to access the needs of the communty.
Once you have completed your community assessment, you will begin to implement activities according to the results. Most communities will probably require consciousness-raising activities first – with students, apprentices, teachers workplace trainers, parents, and other adult groups. You can do this by using techniques like organizing extra-curricular activities with student clubs, facilitating training sessions for teachers on hidden agendas related to girls, developing a committee for the Promotion of Girls’ Education and Women in Development, sponsoring International Women’s Day events, and a host of others. By the end of your first year you will have branched out into non-formal and formal education activities on themes such as the importance of girls’ educaton, gender equity in classrooms and outside the classrooms, initiate clubs, visit and identify model families, train model families on gender equity, teach life skills, organize international Women’s Day activities, etc. Most Volunteers now design and organize, by the end of the first year, a Gender Equity Committee that takes in charge the campaign for the promotion of Girls’ Education in a given community.
During your second year you will continue and diversify the activities of your first year as well as enlarge your sphere of action as required by the needs of your community. You may begin to develop a program for illiterate or under-educated girls. You may also help girls’ and women’s groups develop income-generating activities. You will want to encourage all groups, male and female, to participate in community outreach activities – e.g. theater presentations, song contests, poster contests, peer educator groups, girls’ soccer teams, teacher training in life skills or on gender equity, take our daughters to work, youth camps, seminars, etc. By the end of your second year you should be able to determine if there is a necessity for another GEE Volunteer at your site and if so, what this Volunteer’s role should be. Ideally, there should be no need for more than two successive Volunteers per site before the community is ready to take over all of its GEE interventions. The trained Gender Equity Committee should be able to conduct activities to promote Girls’ Education in the community.
