The New York Times
My Sunday column was about an amazing set of kids living in a Zimbabwe hut together after their four parents died of AIDS. The kid in charge, a high school student, wants a bicycle to reduce his three-hour commute to school each way — and now it looks as if he’ll get it. Several readers are trying to send him money for that bike (I didn’t want to post his contact information for fear of getting him in trouble with the Zimbabwean government, and aid organizations were wary of being intermediaries for similar reasons).
But the broader problem is that there a million Abels, not one. And how can more of them be helped? Many high school girls in particular are at risk of dropping out of school because their parents don’t want them walking long distances to school. That places them at risk of being attacked or raped. As with Abel’s case, one thing that helps in some cases is giving them access to a bicycle. That’s also the idea behind World Bicycle Relief, an aid group that has handed out some 55,000 bicycles to students in poor countries. I haven’t seen World Bicycle Relief in action, but I’ve heard good things about it.
Of course, helping people is always harder than it looks. In Half the Sky, we describe a school outside Seattle that is helping a sister Cambodian school, where one girl was at risk of dropping out because of the long walk to high school. The kids in Seattle gave her money for a bike, and at first everything was fine. Then an older woman asked the girl if she could borrow the bike, and cultural norms about deference were such that the girl felt she couldn’t refuse. So the older woman stole the bike.
The kids in Seattle were beside themselves with frustration and didn’t know what to do. Should they just buy her another bike, when the same thing might happen? They didn’t, and in the end I believe the girl ended up dropping out (although the reasons were probably more complex than just the lack of a bike).
And then another friend, a fellow journalist, got a bike through an aid organization for a needy person in Afghanistan. Next thing he knew, the bike was used in a suicide attack.
So aid is complex; giving money away can be hard. But the commute is clearly one of the obstacles to getting more kids in school — especially for girls going to high school. And while there is no magic bullet, bicycles may be part of the solution, where are mechanisms to repair them and keep them going (and to keep older woman from “borrowing” them). Any of you out there have experience with this kind of thing?
Of course, helping people is always harder than it looks. In Half the Sky, we describe a school outside Seattle that is helping a sister Cambodian school, where one girl was at risk of dropping out because of the long walk to high school. The kids in Seattle gave her money for a bike, and at first everything was fine. Then an older woman asked the girl if she could borrow the bike, and cultural norms about deference were such that the girl felt she couldn’t refuse. So the older woman stole the bike.
The kids in Seattle were beside themselves with frustration and didn’t know what to do. Should they just buy her another bike, when the same thing might happen? They didn’t, and in the end I believe the girl ended up dropping out (although the reasons were probably more complex than just the lack of a bike).
And then another friend, a fellow journalist, got a bike through an aid organization for a needy person in Afghanistan. Next thing he knew, the bike was used in a suicide attack.
So aid is complex; giving money away can be hard. But the commute is clearly one of the obstacles to getting more kids in school — especially for girls going to high school. And while there is no magic bullet, bicycles may be part of the solution, where are mechanisms to repair them and keep them going (and to keep older woman from “borrowing” them). Any of you out there have experience with this kind of thing?
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