This is where I work...

So I hope my former IWP colleague Steve Gibb is reading this because I just paid homage to one of our old inside jokes with the title of this post. This is a picture of ADIFF, the NGO I was assigned to work with. This is a typical Togolese "office" building, and many NGOs are in setups like this, mainly along the national highway (there's just one), just as ADIFF is. The name roughly translates as the association for the advancement of women and girls and it focuses on promoting girls' education and related topics. School attendance is not compulsory in Togo and it's not free, and given that people don't have a lot of money here, it's often difficult for families to afford to send their kids to school. And since girls are often pressed to stay at home and do housework or sell produce and other products in markets, they frequently don't get sent to school if money is tight. So ADIFF basically conducts activities to try to address that problem. Their main program involves implementing a US embassy-funded girls' scholarship in the region of Togo where Sokode is located, called the central region (cleverly named thus as it is the middle region of Togo's 5 regions). The scholarship is also available in 2 other regions, the northernmost region, which is called savannes, and the region to the south of the central region, the plateau region. In the central region, there are over 400 girls receiving the scholarship at schools in Sokode and in surrounding towns and villages.