Molly Melching / Tostan

Molly Melching and the Women of Senegal (http://uk.oneworld.net/article/view/156819/1/9770)

Molly Melching makes that long list sound so natural and sensible. And it is precisely that attitude, taught to thousands of African villagers, that has brought about at least one revolutionary change. Her organization, Tostan, is credited with ending the 2,000 year old practice of the genital mutilation of girls in Senegal. How did Tostan succeed where others had failed? Tostan means breakthrough in one African language - like the hatching of an egg - and peck by peck is how Tostan seems to work so well.

Molly Melching (skollfoundation.org)

Molly Melching, now in her 50's, was an American exchange student to Africa who never returned home. She founded Tostan to educate Africans, one village at a time, from the ground up. What makes Tostan's program different is that it teaches villagers how to make change, not what changes to make. Melching believed educated villagers would empower women, eliminate harmful traditions, and seek economic advantage on their own - creating the kind of organic change that lasts.

Each village is taught with respect and without judgment, in its own language, over two years. Through Tostan, a villager will learn basic literacy, math, hygiene and health. But they will also have been introduced to human rights along the way. (Even in these male dominated cultures, human rights include women and children). And community building skills like dialogue and reconciliation. Melching's program is so useful, it is being embraced in 3,000 villages across 8 different African countries.

The next phase of the Tostan program includes enough math and literacy to dial and text on a cellphone. Most villages had a phone, but many of the villagers didn't know how to use it. With open communication, ideas spread easily from place to place. Tostan encourages the villagers to use the phone for the good of community. News of a bad well, or viral outbreak is now instantaneous and clear. So are the advantages of solar lighting and cook stoves. Social Media can't be far around the corner.

Melching realized that connectedness mattered for social change as well. Large changes rarely happen in isolation. It is fine for a single village to make a small change, but it takes many villages acting together to make a big change. And that is what happened when the women of Senegal announced they would no longer cut the genitalia of their daughters. The change was made by a few village women and spread to many more. Tostan's education revealed the practice as dangerous for women's health. The mutilation was not even Muslim, it was simply a painful, purposeless, social custom. But it was the women of Senegal who made that change. A 2,000 year old custom that could be illuminated slowly by Tostan, marked for change by a generation of African mothers, resulting in that is a huge change in the world for African girls and women. The world, precisely how Molly Melching hoped it could be.