Tostan

A letter from Janet (Jenkins) Martin to our Danville Area

Are you aware that homegrown Danville, Illinois native, Molly Melching, has lived and worked for the past 30 years in Senegal, West Africa and is at the forefront of an unprecedented movement for peaceful social transformation in Africa? She is the Executive Director of the nonprofit organization, Tostan, which she founded in 1991.

I was excited by the articles Molly has been sending on her work so I decided to volunteer to help her achieve Tostan’s goal of reaching at least 1,000 villages by year 2007 in Senegal with their empowering basic education program in national African languages.

Molly believes that educating people on a large scale will end the ancient African tradition of female genital cutting (FGC) in Senegal and recent evaluations have proven this true. Over 5,000 communities practiced FGC in 1997 in Senegal. Thanks to Tostan’s 30 month program, 1,271 villages or 25%, have now declared an end to harmful traditional practices including female genital cutting and early and forced marriage. In the Tostan program, non-literate women and men learn about their human rights and responsibilities, problem-solving, hygiene, health and management skills, then make their OWN decisions and take action. This is the first time such a movement, led by the people themselves, has occurred on the African continent.

I think Danville should be proud of Molly who always mentions that it was her upbringing in our service-oriented and caring community that enabled her to achieve such significant results. She recently won the Sargent Shriver Humanitarian Award in Washington, DC, a University of Illinois Alumni Humanitarian Award, and this year was chosen for the Danville High School Wall of Fame! More than 100 newspaper and magazine articles, TV documentaries and radio shows have appeared on Tostan or Molly in Senegal, the United States, France, Sweden, Dubai, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Holland and England. Tostan has the support of the Senegalese government, international United Nations organizations and was recently chosen by the World Health Organization as a "best practice" for programs leading to community development and improved health.

I am serving on the Advisory Council of Tostan and have decided to energetically encourage everyone from Danville to support Molly at this critical moment. Molly is planning a statewide campaign in Illinois and I want Danville to be at the top of the list for support to her work contributing o the education of thousands of people in a predominantly Muslim country.

If each of us contributes $50 to %100, and asks our friends, churches, organizations, and schools to contribute, we can sponsor many villages. They will be selected in the same region so that we can closely follow the progress of the villages we have adopted for Molly.

Tostan is a 501 C3 organization, thus all contributions are tax deductible. Molly will be visiting Danville in April, 2004, and we will give her our first contribution then. She will be inducted into the DHS Wall of Fame which will be covered by local television and possibly CNN.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me. My home phone number is (217)662-2865. My email address is: bobjan44@aol.com.