How Access to Safe Transportation is Changing Lives
If you’ve followed our work via social media or have partnered with Kurandza in any way over the past few years, you’ve undoubtedly heard us mention “safe transportation” as a key component of our overall goal (to provide an accessible and high quality education to girls in Mozambique). We’re diving into why it’s so impactful and a make it or break it addition to our programs in Mozambique. We hope the information in this post will drive home the importance of safe, reliable, and affordable transportation for children hoping to attend school.
The Importance of Safe Transportation
In communities like the ones we work in, the vast majority of families (1% or fewer) don’t own or have access to a reliable vehicle. It's common for villages to be spread out, with the nearest school being as far as 6-10 miles away. Having school busses or carpools from their homes to their school isn’t the reality for most children (12 miles a day is a long way to walk, no matter how old you are), and public transportation, when available, is expensive. As a result, the only option, for many girls, is to walk the miles to their nearest school; there and back each day, or to drop out.
Although many children willingly endeavor to make this journey every day, there are obvious risks involved. Bad weather, predators on the road, and other factors make walking an unsafe option for most children, and especially young girls. One study published by Research Gate noted that with nearly 32% of pupils living a significant distance from their school (and 100% of the high school girls in our program), even the weather patterns play a dramatic role in the safety of walking to school. Rainy season often creates dangerous rivers, flooding, and improper building structures (leaky thatched roofs and more), forcing children to withdraw from school during these seasons each year.
Our Solution
With the knowledge of the difference that safe, all-year transportation would make, in 2018 we began providing safe transportation to our students, helping them get to and from school each day, ensuring that they were safely with their educators or with the caregivers and eliminating the danger of walking alone. Of our current enrolled students, all of our highschoolers and many preschool pupils rely on transportation each day. Most primary school girls have closer access to their school, so transportation is seldom necessary.
Without access to this transportation, the girls wouldn’t have time for homework or extracurricular activities because all of their spare time was spent walking and on evening chores when they arrived home. With the middle time eliminated, they have hours to spare for homework and household tasks.
Testimonials
Here is what two high school girls in our program had to say about how the simple act of reliable and safe transportation changed their day to day:
“Having the opportunity to use transport helps me a lot. I always arrive early at school and at home and have more time for other tasks. Not to mention that it helps my guardians to save the money they would give me for transportation every day for other expenses.”
“It’s good to have the help of safe transport from the organization, because public transport is difficult to catch and it is also generally very tight that we arrived at the school with our uniform all wrinkled. It’s great to have transport, because that way it ensures that I could finish the school year without giving up on school.”
In Summary
One of the biggest hindrances for children attending school regularly occurs when they don’t have enough time to focus on household chores and attend school. Many parents, unfortunately, don’t allow their children to attend when there isn’t enough time to get to school and back and still work on their chores. However, the time saved through Kurandza’s transportation programs help parents rest at ease, knowing their children are safe, kids can be kids and focus on their schoolwork, housework (and play) knowing that their rides to school are safe and reliable. Furthermore, Kurandza and our partner schools can count on higher enrollment rates and for more girls to stay in school till graduation because they’re simply able to get there safely.
Join us
Are you excited to join us in making a difference through funding access to transportation and other life changing necessities for girls in Mozambique? Click here to join our monthly giving program and sponsor a girl!