Staying in school: a sign of hope for Ganirath, and a sheer relief for her mother

It’s 11.30am on a Wednesday morning in Tchaourou. The atmosphere at the public secondary school is quiet: all students are in class while a group of women are preparing lunch in the school central yard, under the tree.

In one of the classes, we hear the voice of Ganirath, a fourteen-year-old student, who, only a few months ago, had seen her dreams shattered after hearing her mother informing her of a tragic news: her family no longer had money to pay for her school fees. Every morning and evening, she used to walk to and from school with her siblings. Times were challenging for her mother, who was struggling to run her business selling wasawasa meals, a local form of couscous made of dried and ground yam, flavoured with fried garlic and onion, spiced with salt and chili.

"I was able to manage and meet the needs of my daughter for her education. But a personal situation came up and I started to struggle financially to keep my activity when she reached Grade 4. It’s at this very moment that I decided to take her out of school, because when they asked for money for photocopies or for her breakfast at school, I didn’t have enough savings, my activities were slowing down”, Amélie, Ganirath’s mother, explains.

Right before her mother was about to take her out of school, Ganirath and her siblings came back home and informed her that the school director wanted to see her, along with other parents. A few days later, Ganirath and Amélie walked the few hundred meters that separate their house from the school and heard from the school director that a new programme was being implemented and that families who had girls in school would receive cash transfers, to help them keep their girls in school.

They took both their names and Amélie’s phone numbers and a few weeks later, Amélie was invited to Tchaourou’s youth center. Benin’s Minister of Social Affairs was here, along with representatives from UNICEF, the Embassy of the Netherlands and UNICEF National Ambassador and national artist Zeynab.

“The Minister explained how cash transfers would be organized and everything else around the programme. I thought that if they could keep their promise, it would be good because I was very concerned and felt helpless”, Amélie adds.

Ganirath says she was sad and worried by the news.

Amélie eventually received a SMS and asked her daughter to read it for her. She had received 15,000 FCFA (25 US$) on her mobile money account. With the money received, she bought casava pods to relaunch her wasawasa business and school supplies for her daughter to return to school and pursue her education.

“As soon as we received this money I said to myself that we should invest it to manage our lives better. It helped me to take better care of my daughter. Thanks to the profit I’m now making, she can stay in school and now she is in Grade 5”, Amélie comments. 

Every month, she is able to put 15,000 FCFA aside in saving from the income she makes. “Thanks to that, I can give Ganirath 100 CFCA every morning so she can eat at school, and when she needs photocopies, she can have them.”

Her teacher, Simon Eugene Aouga, has been working at the school for 26 years. The unconditional cash assistance programme has been pivotal to making sure girls can continue with their studies, he explains, pointing out that there are 17 girls and 15 boys in her class.

“There is no doubt that the programme made a difference in her life. Once the cash transfer came through, she became more interested and committed to her studies. She is no longer afraid to ask questions. She is now the first to raise her hand, even when she doesn’t know the answer!” he explains.

Ganirath says she hopes to become a school principal, because she wants to move her parents out of poverty and offer them a better life and help her siblings become successful like her.