AGILE Amakolo College Attendance Program for African Girls

MAWA serves over 600 African women and girls each year through the after-school program, AGILE, college attendance program, employment services, social services and contributes to MN's cultural landscape through African Harmony, an African traditional choral group.

A very significant number of Pan-African refugee girls and young women living in the Twin Cities area of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota face an exceptional set of challenges that keep them locked in lives of poverty and dependence. There is a great unmet need to mobilize and link community resources to provide African girls with the knowledge, skills, and support that they need to succeed in high school and go on to post-secondary education.

While resettling and gaining independence is difficult for all immigrants, it is much more dramatic and highly challenging for African women and girls. Many Pan-African girls in the Twin Cities are recently arrived from living in refugee camps where they have typically lived for three to five years. In the camps, the girls had very limited or no educational opportunities. Not only do these girls live in poverty and lack family and community role models for school and career success, they continue to face severe male domination and subjugation that is ingrained in their African cultures and holds them back at every turn. These Pan-African girls receive very low expectations for their education and work success from their communities and parents.

African women and girls, extensive self-reporting, school and MAWA staff observation, and available data find that many African girls in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area are at very high risk because they struggle with adapting to and succeeding in school and the community, making a successful transition to adulthood, and moving out of poverty. As a result, they are experiencing a range of serious individual, family, social and health problems including underachievement in school, very low levels of college attendance, high teen pregnancy rates, poverty, HIV infection, and family violence.

The practice of undervaluing African women and girls common in Africa continues in Minnesota. However, since MAWA began working with African girls in after-school programs from 2004, school staff have reported a marked improvement in the girls' participation in school and their self-esteem. Following our first year of a college attendance focus, all 17 seniors participating in AGILE were admitted into college thereby giving us a reason to continue along this line. AGILE provides these girls the extra help they need to understand the American system of education, takes them on college visits to familiarize them with college life and expectations and provides them African mentors who are professional women or students. MAWA often has to provide transportation for these participants but their enthusiasm and focus makes the extra demands worthwhile.