A2Empowerment had a successful 2019-2020 school year and was able to help 86 young women throughout Cameroon go to school through scholarships and mentorship. Unfortunately, schools were interrupted partway through the school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the individuals who received scholarships from A2Empowerment
still made incredible progress in their academic development. A2Empowerment endeavors to monitor and evaluate the impact that the scholarship and mentoring have on each of the recipients by working with the scholarship coordinators, ensuring that the program is working as intended, and allowing A2Empowerment to make adjustments as necessary.
The results of that monitoring and evaluation have demonstrated the positive impact A2Empowerment has had on the lives of these young women. Almost half of the recipients reported that they would not have been able to continue going to school without a scholarship from A2Empowerment, and one girl had even dropped out and went back to school after finding out that she would receive it!
Many of the recipients were able to improve their study habits because they received a scholarship from A2Empowerment. While many young women still had expenses that were not covered by the scholarship, such as transportation or textbooks, more than half of scholarship recipients reported that they were able to either stop working or work fewer hours because they received the scholarship. This gave the girls more time to study, and more than 2/3 of scholarship recipients had time to participate in school extracurricular activities. A2Empowerment is using the data collected to adjust the scholarship amounts to cover more school-related expenses, such as textbooks, in the future.
Financial support was not the only reason for their academic progress this year – A2Empowerment does not just provide scholarships, but mentorship as well. Scholarship recipients are expected to attend monthly meetings where they receive training on life skills and the scholarship coordinators can monitor their academic progress. More than half of the girls reported that this monitoring and support by their scholarship coordinators helped them with their academic progress, and a third said that support from their fellow scholarship recipients helped them.
While A2Empowerment cannot solve all of the challenges that the scholarship recipients have to deal with – for example, approximately half of the recipients do not have access to electricity – the financial support and mentoring provided through the A2Empowerment Scholarship Program has made a tremendous difference in the lives of the scholarship recipients.
Narrative written by Graham Button, Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and A2Empowerment Director in charge of monitoring and evaluation