Wow. Really telling realization.

We have been focusing on the issues of girls in Africa and telling everyone we meet how important it is to help girls understand that their education, status in society, and dreams for the future are just as important as boys'.

So, then, I decided to add new photographs to the template of our blog, and I (unwittingly, I hope) chose photos that showed only assertive males participating in our programs (they do tend to take over). If you look at what I ended up posting, you'll notice that every photo shows the boys coming up front-and-center to take part in the educational opportunities we are providing.

I had not really understood until this moment how ingrained it is in Africa to train boys to be assertive, aggressive, and to focus on making sure they get the most out of school.

The Sara program is addressing this issue head-on. Now that I see my own version of this propensity to favor the students who "stand up for themselves", I completely understand why we need to bring the Sara program to as many African countries (and American states) as possible.

I'm going to leave the template photos up until tomorrow so that you can see for yourselves how wrong-headed I was in choosing these images (just look at the photos on the right side navigation bar...in Kigoma and Gombe...and you'll see what I mean).

Rest-assured...I'll present a more "fair and balanced" (yucky Fox News reference...sorry) representation of our students, both male and female, tomorrow.

Wow.

E