Ms. Molly Melching of Tostan, a Senegalese NGO, described the fast-developing events in that country. One of the village leaders, Demba Diawara, who attended that declaration and had once supported FGC, then walked from village to village, discussing why FGC should be ended. The endogenous marriage pattern and close ties among the extended family make FGC a group behavior. There have been no reported cases of female circumcision in those villages since then. Another 18 villages made the same commitment in July 1998 in the presence of the media, government representatives, and development partners.
Public pledges are a powerful tool for ending centuries-old traditions.
But to work, they must be rooted in women's confidence and decision-making capacity. As women in the program gained a sense of their own rights and those of other women, confidence in their decision-making and advocacy skills, and accurate health information, they began to question genital cutting and prompted the community to declare itself to be against the practice. Based on the experiences of the 31 villages that first ended FGC, Tostan has developed a shorter program that is now being implemented on an experimental basis. The two education programs have in common that they allow villagers to analyze their own situation, set their own goals, develop critical thinking skills, find solutions to problems, and rehearse strategies for social change throughout the learning process. A third avenue leading to public declarations against FGC is social mobilization by participants in an education program and members of the same ethnic group.