This program has been created as a desperate way to save the young girls from the rampant condition called fistula, in Niger, a remotely-known country on the Sahara Desert in West Africa, where parents wait to marry off their girls to collect the dowries.  Girls are often married off as young as 12.  (Their legal age is 15)  As a not-fully-developed girl delivers a baby, her tissues are torn, and without proper medical treatments, fistula condition results.   The girl is disowned by her husband and neighbors, and ends up outside the village waiting for a slow, lonely, painful death. 

 

As more education increases the value of the dowry, keeping the girls in school and room and board support would save them from succumbing to early marriages.  However, the secondary schools are far and rare to find except in a few big cities. 

 

This project offers each girl a scholarship that covers the school fees, school supplies, uniforms, transportation, and room and board (total approximately $60/mo) for 7-years, the length of the secondary education in Niger.  The parents of the recipients of this scholarship sign the contract that they will not marry the girl until she is done with high school.  The girl also signs promising to maintain a good academic standing, and also promising that when she is done with high school, she will help a girl from her primary school for a year either financially or by volunteer tutoring service.