Wow! We are Celebrating the successful completion of the Season 3 of Africa Educates Her Campaign-Angola. Don't Miss This Exciting Day! Webisode 41

Congratulations!

Celebration of the successful completion of Africa Educates Her Campaign with Sofonie Dala - Season 3

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We are tonight's entertainment!

This night at this place, we have a great deal to celebrate. And I want to begin by saying, simply, to every one of you - thank you.

Access of girls to education in rural areas

Girls in rural areas of Africa are excluded from education not because of cultural resistance or unwillingness, but because of poverty - the main barrier to girls' education.

Our today's activity  was carried out in a rural community. We decided to give our support to girls who are not studying due to extreme poverty and also because of the barriers that Covid-19 has caused.

We carry out activities such as conducting a lesson, singing, reciting poetry and distributing school and biosafety materials.

"If a poor girl cannot come to the education, then education must go to her."

Our case study today are the sisters Teresa and Tininha, they participated in our interview at the end of last year. According to them, they stopped studying in 2018 because of serious financial problems facing the family. Fortunately, we also had the opportunity to speak with their mother who certified that she has no financial means to pay for her daughters' studies. They live in a rural area, in the slate house in very poor conditions where they never had electricity or clean water. With the advent of Covid-19, their lives became even more difficult.

Thank God, we had a basic class with them, we distributed some school and biosafety materials such as notebooks, pencils and surgical masks. They thanked and were very happy. 

Click here to see their first interview:

Webisode 8. Interview with Fernanda (Tininha)

Webisode 9. Interview with Teresa 

Webisode 6. Interview with Luisa  - the mother

Women in rural communities, in particular, have been left behind

In times of crisis or conflict, education is on the frontline. Everyone is affected but specially girls' and women. COVID-19 threatens the right of over 10 million African girls to education - these girls might never come back to school if we do not take action!

For over a decade, education for girls has been identified as one of the best solutions to reversing the relentless trend of poverty and disease devastating large portions of sub-Saharan Africa.

Entry poetry by Teresa, followed by a basic class with the children

Hello, my name is Teresa, I am 13 years old, I stopped studying when I was in seventh grade in 2018 due to financial problems. All these kids who are here with me don't study either.

However, I would like to recite a poem about Covid-19:

There are diseases that are worse than diseases

There are diseases that are more than disease

That make things more urgent and more difficult

I fear coronavirus and zeal for my life

Our faith is the vaccine

The pandemic that now dominates the world haunts me

I didn't want this plague

Protect yourself and protect us

There is no evil that lasts forever

Have resilience because everything passes!

After reciting the poem, Teresa decided to leave an appeal to all sponsors and investors:

Coronavirus is one of the reasons that these children do not study. I hope that a sponsor will appear to finance the school for all the girls.

After all we had a basic class in which the children learned to speak English.

The class was so fruitful that at the end of the program, the children shouted in chorus "We want to study, we want to study"!

"We want to study, we want to study"!

"We want to study, we want to study"!

Post-Campaign Report

Our campaign, named "Africa Educates Her Angola - Season 3'', started on December 18, 2020, collecting over 40 video interviews of girls and young ladies with different academic levels, from pre-school to university degrees. Some participants never attended school and others dropped out of school for various reasons, such as teenage pregnancy, poverty, child marriage and the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic.

From season 1 launched in August 2020 to to season 3 ended in January 2021, over hundred students including teachers were interviewed.

All participants were from different provinces of Angola. The data showed that COVID-19 pandemic lockdown affected the academic performance of most participants (99%) with varying degrees.

20% of the girls we interviewed are no longer students, they dropped out of school many years ago due to poverty, teen pregnancy and child marriage. Today they regret bitterly for dropping out of school for futile reasons.

35% of the girls we interviewed returned to school in October 2020 once they reopened. But most girls are dissatisfied with the weak conditions that their school created against the covid-19. They complain that there is not enough protection or biosafety materials. In addition, some teachers and students do not follow the preventive measures against covid-19.

Many students commented that they forgot almost everything they studied before the pandemic, and this affected their exams. According to them, the exams were very difficult.

45% of the girls we interviewed have been out of school since March 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and inability to pay school fees. Many of them spend their entire day at home busy with housework, some spend their days on the streets playing and dancing with friends.

However, they all dream of returning to school one day.

It is important to remember that schools in Angola reopened in early October, the Angolan government postponed the resumption of lessons in primary education (1st to 5th grade), the largest chunk of the education system. The postponement in the Primary Education owed to the increase in Covid-19 positive cases in the country.

The main goal of the campaign is to ensure all girls have access to a quality and safe education by dismantling the barriers imposed by Covid-19, poverty, teenage pregnancy and child marriage. In addition, we also want to partner with communities in support of girls ’education.

The campaign works to integrate girls who have dropped out of school back into the education system.

Brief covid-19 considerations and special song by Engracia

Hello, my name is Engracia, I will talk about the damage that the coronavirus caused in my country Angola.

Since the coronavirus emerged, a lot has happened in my country, such as increased hunger and poverty and also because of this same disease, many parents lost their jobs, many children stopped going to school, we lost our school year.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic many parents, mothers and children are locked up at home. For example, I am also a student and spent a lot of time at home without studying!

However, I would like to sing a special song for you!

School school school is beautiful, see you tomorrow comrade teacher, if God wants tomorrow we will come again!

When the quarantine passes I want to enjoy, 

I will love I will love until I say enough

And if the world ends it may even end,

 But I will live with you in the heavenly city

School, school school that teaches us to read and write, I want to go

I want to go to school, school, school even with this pandemic

Time will repair everything that it caused and  will fix it

Time will show me everything that wins, it will fix

School school, school I want to go to school to learn to read and write

I want to be someone in life, I want to go to school my God help us

I want to go to school, school to learn

I want to go to school to learn

I want to go to school, school, school

I miss my classmates.

“While this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not.” We campaign and advocate at the international, regional and national level to put pressure on governments and the international community to deliver the right of everyone to a free, quality, public education.

I want to express to each of you my deep gratitude for contributing to the success of this outstanding campaign.

Together we have transformed African consciousness as to what kind of nation we can become, and have taken this continent a major step forward in the never-ending struggle for educational justice, economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice.

Gallery

Sofonie Dala 

Interviews - the Complete Collection

Ladies and gentlemen, here Ladies a glimpse of how the post-COVID-19 education looks like for students in Angola.

1.Webisode 41:Celebrating the successful completion of the Season3

2. Penultimate Webisode 40 with Audia

3. Webisode 39 with Lorena

4. Webisode 38 Lucrecia

5. Webisode 37 with Clara

6. Webisode 36 with Gracieth

7. Webisode 35 with Rosaria

8. Webisode 34 with Julia

9. Webisode 33 Esperanca

10. Webisode 32 with Domingas

11. Webisode 31 with Victoria

12. Webisode 30 with Alice

13. Webisode 29 with Luisa

14. Webisode 28 with Catarina

15. Webisode 27. Visitor

16. Webisode 26. Interview with Felicia 

17. Webisode 25. Interview with Belma 

18. Webisode 24. Interview with Estefania 

19. Webisode 23. Interview with Luenda 

20. Webisode 22. Interview with Nicha 

21. Webisode 21. Interview with Filo 

22. Webisode 20. Interview with Meury 

23. Webisode 19. Interview with Teresa 

24. Webisode 18. Interview with Isabel 

25. Webisode 17. Interview with Esperança João  

26. Webisode 16. Interview with Iracelma + Augusta 

27. Webisode 15. Interview with Laurinda 

28. Webisode 14. Interview with Marcelina 

29. Webisode 13. Interview with Inacia 

30. Webisode 12. Interview with Tania 

31. Webisode 11. Interview with Filismina 

32. Webisode 10. Interview with Angelina 

33. Webisode 9. Interview with Teresa 

34. Webisode 8. Interview with Fernanda (Tininha)

35. Webisode 7. Interview with: Maria Gomes

36. Webisode 6. Interview with Luisa 

37. Webisode 5. Interview with Arieth 

38. Webisode 4. Interview with Filomena

39.  Webisode 3. Interview with: Edvania

40. Webisode 2. Interview with Engacia

41. Webisode 1. Launching Season 3: Speech of Sofonie Dala + interview with Laurinda

⏬Overview of Africa Educates Her Campaign Angola. Interview with Sofonie Dala. Bonus

⏬ Celebrating the successful completion of the Season 2

⏬Celebrating the successful completion of the Season 1

Many many thanks, we hope to see you soon!

We launched this campaign to ensure that every girl is able to learn while schools are closed and return to the classroom when schools safely reopen. Everyone can play a role in supporting girls education - whether you are a teacher, parent, student, journalist, policymaker, or simply a concerned citizen.

Don't miss this opportunity to bring girls back to school. Tell us your story!

Do you have a personal experience with the coronavirus would you like to share? Or a tip on how your town or community is handling the poverty among women?

FIND SOMEONE TO SPONSOR TODAY

Your sponsorship will help the most vulnerable girls and women to take the first step out of poverty.

Click here to watch free full webisodes: https://she-leads.blogspot.com/

ANGOLA GAINS INFECTIOUS DISEASE TREATMENT CENTRE

 The Minister of State for Social Affairs, Carolina Cerqueira, announced Saturday that the 1,200-bed Infectious Disease Treatment Centre, located in Calumbo, Viana (Luanda), would soon start operating.

According to the minister, who was speaking at a press conference, the new health infrastructure is part of the actions carried out by the Angolan government aimed at increasing the supply and improving health services provided to the population.

Carolina Cerqueira also said that the inauguration of the Cunene Campaign Hospital was also under way, whilst Benguela and Uíge are under construction.

Similar hospitals are under construction in Huila and Cuanza Sul.

The minister recalled that the campaign hospitals in Lunda Norte and Cabinda were operating as part of the campaign to combat and prevent Covid-19.

COVID-19: ANGOLA REPORTS 97 RECOVERIES, 59 NEW CASES

The Angolan health authorities have recorded 59 new cases and 97 recoveries in the last 24 hours.

Among the new patients, according to the national epidemiological report, 41 were diagnosed in Luanda, 5 in Huambo, 4 in Bié, 4 in Zaire, 4 in Cabinda and 1 in Moxico.

The patients are aged between 10 and 74 years, 31 men and 28 women.

The recovered patients, 93 are in Luanda, 2 in Bié and 2 in Lunda Sul, aged between 7 and 87 years.

The national reports registers 19,782 cases, with 464 deaths, 18,015 recovered and 1,303 active people.

Of the active people, 6 were in a critical state, 9 serious, 92 moderate, 90 light and 1,106 asymptomatic.

In the treatment centres there are 197 inpatients, while 57 people are in institutional quarantine and 1,905 contacts under epidemiological surveillance.

The laboratories processed 1,622 samples.

For GameStop day traders, the moment they’ve dreamed about

 They’ve endured a financial crisis. Two deep recessions. Mounds of student debt. Stagnant pay. Costly health care. Dim job prospects.

They’ve seen the uber-rich grow richer while a pandemic threw tens of millions of people out of work and left much more isolated and vulnerable at home.

Now, they feel, it’s payback time.

Nearly a decade after the Occupy protest movement left Wall Street more or less unscathed, the citadel of financial might faces a new assault.

Day traders, mobilized on a subreddit page, have poured about all the money they can find into the stocks of a struggling video game retailer called GameStop and a few other beaten-down companies. Their buying has swollen those companies’ share prices beyond anyone’s imagination — and, not coincidentally, inflicted huge losses on the hedge funds of the super-rich, who had placed bets that the stocks would drop.

Their strategy, of course, is freighted with risk. The prices of the stocks they’ve bought are now multiples above any level justified by revenue, earnings, or future prospects. The danger is that at any time, the stocks could collapse.

Maybe so. But as one Reddit user wrote Friday, asserting that hedge fund financiers would drink Champagne as they looked down upon Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2011:

“I’d rather lose it all than give them what they need to destroy me … I’ll burn it all down just to spite them.”

Their rage and hell-bent drive to pick on powerful Wall Street financiers have sent shivers through ordinary investors and heightened fears about the fragility of the markets in general after a prolonged period of stock gains fueled by ultra-low interest rates. Those fears just caused the S&P 500 index to suffer its worst week of losses since October.

GameStop shares? They rocketed nearly 70% on Friday. Over the past three weeks, they’ve delivered a stupefying 1,600% gain.

“They figured out how to play the way Wall Street has been playing for a long time,” said Robert Thompson, who has long tracked cultural trends as director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. “I’m amazed it didn’t happen earlier.’’

Feeding the frenzy has been young traders like 27-year-old Zach Weir, who this week bought five shares of GameStop.

“I’m a college student, so that’s basically a month’s rent for me,” said Weir, who is pursuing a master’s degree in marketing.

He did it, he said because he believes in the cause: Protecting a cherished game store, where he would hang out as a teenager on Friday nights, from financial tycoons who want the company to fail.

And if he loses his investment?

“If my account goes to zero, it goes to zero,” Weir said. “At this point, it’s not about the money. I think this is bigger than the money now”

Frustration and rage over widening financial inequities in the American economy have been mounting for years. The richest 1% of Americans collected about 19% of pre-tax income in 2019, up from less than 11% four decades earlier, according to the World Inequality Database, run by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists at the University of California, Berkeley, along with other researchers.

New York University economist Edward Wolff has found that the richest 10% of Americans own roughly 85% of the stock wealth, a share that has grown steadily over time.

The financial crisis that ignited the Great Recession of 2007-2009 intensified resentment toward the bankers who had financed the dodgy loans behind the catastrophe and had ignored the obvious risks, only to receive bailouts from taxpayers and largely escape accountability. Rising outrage fueled the Occupy movement, in which protesters took over New York’s Zuccotti Park and other public spaces and demanded far-reaching financial reforms that mainly didn’t happen.

The coronavirus inflicted further pain, flattening the economy and causing more than 20 million Americans to lose jobs. This week, a report from the anti-poverty group Oxfam found that the world’s 10 richest men have swollen their collective wealth by $500 billion since the pandemic erupted in March. In the meantime, nearly 10 million people who lost jobs to the pandemic remain unemployed.

The stock market, the chosen target of the Reddit day traders, has long stood as America’s premier symbol of entrenched wealth. But technology, including forums like Reddit, has made it ever easier, faster and simpler for the aggrieved to mobilize, swap information and collectively plot strategy. And e-trading apps, notably Robinhood, allow amateur traders to buy commission-free stocks with one click.

They spotted a vulnerability in the market: The so-called short squeeze.

When hedge funds and other investors want to bet that a stock price will fall, they arrange a short sale: They borrow shares of, say, GameStop. Then they sell those borrowed shares, planning to buy back the stock later at a lower price and pocket the gain.

But shorting can backfire disastrously if the stock surges instead of falling. Then the short sellers can be forced to bail out of their bets by buying the target stock. Their buying, in turn, can send the stock price ever higher and makes things even worse for the short sellers in an intensifying feedback loop.

GameStop, its future imperiled by e-commerce and a pandemic that has kept customers away, is among the most heavily shorted stocks. Some of the Reddit rebels are gamers who want to protect the retailer from the predations of Wall Street. Or just deliver a righteous blow to hedge funds and financiers who have lived large as others have suffered hardships.

Not all the day traders are inflamed by anger. They just see an opportunity to make money and pay bills.

“A lot of people are having trouble paying rent,” said Alexis Goldstein, a veteran of the Occupy movement. “A lot of people are at risk of eviction. A lot of people are very desperate, quite frankly, for new ways to make money.”

Yet Goldstein worries that the revolt will ultimately fail.

For one thing, some of the Wall Street firms that are targets of the Redditors actually profit from the very volatility that the Redditors’ assault has whipped up.

And the most sophisticated professional traders are no doubt calculating how to capitalize on the chaos. Normally, they have to work hard and invest heavily to determine what their competitors are doing and to profit from that information. By contrast, the Reddit day traders are announcing their intentions, brazenly and publicly.

“I suspect it’s not Robinhood investors and Redditors who are making money,” Goldstein said.

She would like to see a different slate of reforms — reforms to rein in Wall Street’s excesses while helping those who’ve been left behind.

“Hopefully, we can ask fundamental questions about whether we want our markets to be speculation-driven or do we want them to create innovation and jobs,” she said. “Stop hustling so hard for a buck and instead rebuild the social safety net.”

Tom Osran, a 59-year-old Chicago lawyer, has been reading the WallStreetBets forum on Reddit for years. But it was only last week that he decided to act for the first time, buying into GameStop. His investment, he said, is up 1,000% from last week, though he declined to reveal the dollar amount.

Osran said he figures that its astronomical stock rise can save GameStop from hedge funds that are betting that a company with 40,000 employees will fail.

“It’s fun being part of a movement,” Osran said.

He knows he could lose everything he put into GameStop shares. Yet he’s philosophical.

“We’re all adults, we all know stocks can go up and down,” Osran said. “It’s been insanely lucrative so far, but it could be all gone tomorrow.”

Thousands flee Hong Kong for UK, fearing China crackdown

 Cindy had a comfortable lifestyle in Hong Kong: she owned several properties with her husband, they had a good business going. But last year she made up her mind to leave it all behind and move her family to Britain, and not even a global pandemic was going to sway her decision.

“To uproot ourselves like this is definitely not easy. But things got uglier last year, the government was really driving us away,” said the businesswoman and mother of two young children who didn’t give her family name because she feared repercussions for speaking out against the Chinese government. “Everything we value – freedom of speech, fair elections, liberties – has been eroded. It’s no longer the Hong Kong we knew, it’s no longer somewhere we can call home.”

Cindy, who landed in London last week, is one of thousands of Hong Kongers fleeing their hometown since Beijing imposed a draconian national security law on the territory last summer.

Some are leaving because they fear punishment for supporting pro-democracy protests. But many others, like her, say China’s encroachment on their way of life and civil liberties has become unbearable, and they want to seek a better future for their children abroad. Most say they don’t plan to ever go back.

Many firmed up their exit plans after Britain announced in July that it would open a special immigration pathway for up to 5 million eligible Hong Kongers to live, work and eventually settle in the U.K.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said this week the offer shows Britain is honoring its “profound ties of history” with Hong Kong, a former colony that reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 on the understanding that it would retain its Western-style freedoms and much of its political autonomy not seen on mainland China.

Applications for the British National Overseas visa officially open Sunday, though many like Cindy have already arrived on British soil to get a head start. Eligible Hong Kongers can currently come to the U.K. for six months, but from Sunday they can apply for the right to live and work in the country for five years. After that, they can apply for settled status and then British citizenship.

Britain’s government said some 7,000 people with British National Overseas (BNO) status have arrived since July. It estimates that over 300,000 people will take up the offer of extended residency rights in the next five years.

Cindy said she wanted to leave as soon as possible because she feared Beijing would soon move to halt the exodus.

“The Chinese government said it hasn’t ruled out harsher tactics,” she said. “I think they could lash out if tens of thousands of young professionals start leaving, because that would surely upset Hong Kong’s economy and they wouldn’t like that at all.”

Beijing said Friday it will no longer recognize the BNO passport as a travel document or form of identification, and criticized Britain’s citizenship offer as a move that “seriously infringed” on China’s sovereignty. It was unclear what effect the announcement would have because many Hong Kongers carry multiple passports.

Beijing drastically hardened its stance on Hong Kong after massive anti-government protests in 2019 turned violent and plunged the city into a months-long crisis. Since the security law’s enactment, dozens of pro-democracy activists have been arrested, and the movement’s young leaders have either been jailed or fled abroad.

Because the new law broadly defined acts of subversion, secession, foreign collusion and terrorism, many in Hong Kong fear that expressing any form of political opposition – even posting messages on social media – could land them in trouble.

“I think if you knew when to shut up, you’ll be OK staying in Hong Kong,” said 39-year-old Fan, who also recently arrived in London. Like Cindy, he didn’t want to provide his full name. “But I don’t want to do that. I can complain about the queen if I wanted to – I can say anything here.”

Fan, an animator, had sold his flat in Hong Kong and plans to slowly build a new life in Britain – a country he had never even visited before. He won’t be alone in starting from scratch.

“This is a really unique emigration wave – some people haven’t had time to actually visit the country they’re relocating to. Many have no experience of living abroad,” said Miriam Lo, who runs Excelsior UK, a relocation agency. “And because of the pandemic, they couldn’t even come over to view a home before deciding to buy.”

The British government estimates there are 2.9 million BNO status holders eligible to move to the U.K., with a further 2.3 million eligible dependants. The U.K. introduced BNO passports in the 1980s for people who were a “British dependent territories citizen by connection with Hong Kong.” Until recently, the passports had limited benefits because they did not confer nationality or the right to live and work in Britain.

Cindy, the businesswoman, was still recovering from jetlag, but she’s upbeat about her future.

“We want to bring Hong Kong’s energy, our resources and our finances here,” she said. “The move is for our kids, sure. But we want to build a whole new life here for ourselves too.”