Catalina's Story Catalina is a Guatemalan Indian who is the youngest in a family of six children. Although none of her siblings finished grade school, her father urged her to continue her studies, seeing it as something prestigious and a good business investment. He also did it "as an expression of love," says Catalina. After high school Catalina's family made an extra effort to get money to put her through a college preparatory institute so that she could go to die university. Here, however, Catalina's dissatisðfaction with her education began. Institute attendance meant leaving her village, family and friends. Her fees, she knew, drained the resources of her family, and it hurt her knowing that her brothers and sisters worked hard everyday while she studied. At the institute for the first time she began to experience racism. "The teachers and the non-Indian students thought of us as second-class?..My preparation was deficient since the teachers in our village school had been poorly prepared. It was hard for me to reach the level of the others."

After leaving the preparatory institute, Catalina found that her father couldn't continue to pay for her studies. On her own, she signed up to study medicine at San Carlos University, where she became aware of how few Indians at the University level and fewer still would ever attain a degree. It was as if, she said, "we Indians are trapped in a huge net and we cannot get out" In order to support her studies, Catalina had to work in a restaurant and open a small business to sell hand-woven blouses made by women in her village. Eventually this pace exhausted her. She finished the year, but switched from medical school to study seceondary education, which required two years less.

After her studies, Catalina taught in village schools where her pupils were forced to speak only Spanish, as their indigenous languages were forbidden, and where, compared to schools in wealthy areas, supplies were almost nonexistent and teacher preparation poor.

Catalina ends her tale reflecting that, while her father had wanted her to study so that she could help her village, "He didn't know what suffering a little knowledge brings with it ?When l am depressed, I think it would be better to be illiterate?.When I am optimistic, I dream that one day all of us will know more than just reading and writing."

(Summary of Catalina's testimony, in Action Guide for Girls' Education, Bay Area Girls' Education Network, 1995)

Educating for the needs of Women and girls

Around the globe, fewer girls enter primary school than boys. In each successive year of education, fewer and fewer girls remain. Only a fraction of the women in most countries ever reach higher educaðtion levels and have a chance of a professional degree.

Why do girls drop out?

A 1994 study in Africa found these factors:

• Negative parental attitudes stemming from cultural practices and value systems, including early marðriage and childbearing
• High cost of education, especially in countries forced to cut school expenditures because of strucðtural adjustment programmes
• Poverty that makes a girl's work essential to family survival
• Sexual harassment both within and outside the school environment, with resulting parental fears for their daughters' safety and the family's honour
• Schoolgirl pregnancy
• Girl-unfriendly pedagogic styles and physical facilities
• Curriculums that are rigid and irrelevant to giris' experience.

(Girls and African Education: Research and Action to Keep Girls in School, Forum for African Women Educationalists, Nairobi, 1995)

Most educational systems are designed for students who can attend school all day during the school year for at least 10 consecutive years. In addition families are often required to pay for school fees, books and uniforms. Such systems exclude poor children. especially girls, who often must work alongside their parðents for family survival. In cultures where early marriages are customary, girls are usually withdrawn from school before they can achieve literacy or fully develop other sklls.The costs of girls dropping out are very high: they become trapped in poverty and powerlessness with few skills and little hope for change.

What is needed worldwide are flexible structures to extend educational opportunities to out-of-school women and girls, especially those such as teenaged mothers, girls at home, the disabled, those living on the streets and those displaced and affected by armed conflict, all of whom receive low priority in national programmes. Women face many obstacles to continuing education:

Because most women are overworked, few have the leisure to attend training programmes on an extended basis. Educational opportunities need to be close to home and to accommodate their children or work in conjunction with child care programmes.

Another obstacle is the opposition of husbands. For example, at a workshop on land reform and women's issues, rural South African women cited abuse from their husbands as a principal fear. The men were antagonistic "because we [women] came here to learn about our rights," and many reported either being forbidden to attend or beaten because they dared to do so. (Hlomelikusasa, Janine Hicks et al. Women's Rights as Human Rights:A Training Manual, Skills for the Future," Community Law Centre, Durban, South Africa, 1995).

However, community-based programmes that offer health care and other social services can also pmðvide women of all ages training programmes in literacy and nontraditional vocational skiIls, as well as gender awareness, legal information and other knowledge that can enable them to assume control of the resources they generate and to understand their options in family life, vocations and social relations. The key to such forms of popular education is flexibility and availability.

?lt;/p>

Exercise l : Bringing education to all women

Objective: To understand the educational needs of out-of-school women and strategize how to meet them
Time: 60 minutes
Materials: Chart paper and markers or blackboard and chalk

I. List :
Divide a sheet of chart paper into two columns. Ask the participants to identify categories of out-of-school women and girls in their community who could benefit from education, whether formal or non-formal. How could Catalina (see box above) benefit from non-formal education? Write their answers in the first column labeled "Who Needs Education?" Next to each group, write in the second column labeled "what Kind of Education?" the kinds of learning that the group would wish for or beneift from.

2. Discuss:
Divide participants into small groups. Ask each group to select a category of women from their list and design a popular education programme for them. Alternatively, the whole group can select one category to work on and then develop the separate parts of the programme in small groups.

Suggest the following guidelines:

What are the educational needs of this group of women? Do not limit your thinking to "school subjects" or"school room" settings and hours.

Determine what subjects this model programme will offer How wilI you know if the women need these subjects? How can you justify these subjects to the women in the community? To their husbands? To the authorities? To possible funders?

• What methods will you use to make learning relevant and effective for these women?
• Consider the logistical problems women may have in attending, such as scheduling. transportaðtion, and child care. How can your programme accommodate their needs? ? Consider the personal problems women may have in attending, such as spousal or parental opposition. fear of embarrassment, self-doubts and community criticism. ?
• Are there community organizations with which they might ally themselves to reach and teach out-of-school women?
• Give your model programme an attractive name and devise a 30 second TV or radio announcement to advertise the programme. What strategies are needed to attract women to the programme?

3. Report / Analyze:

Ask each group to present its radio / television announcement and a spokesperson to describe the model programme her group has developed. Compare these presentations:

• What were viewed as the most important subjects to teach?
• What methodologies seemed appropriate for this learning situation?
• What were the greatest logistic and personal problems?
• What communrty resources and strategies did the group identify?

4. Discuss:

• What is the role of women in bringing these educational opportunities to other women?
• How will this educational programme further women's human rights?