A PAW Follow-up

Bill and Anne Marie Foltz and Charles and Sandi Ellis in Mali

Former roommates CHARLES ELLIS and BILL FOLTZ met again at our 45th. They
decided they still liked each other. Each wife liked the other. Bill arranged for Charles to
join a nonprofit board and to visit, with wives, the Muslim, French-speaking, largely
desert land of Mali in West Africa. There they inspected several of the nonprofit's
teaching projects, the seed funding for which Charles and his wife, Sandi. provided. The
project is helping ameliorate, as Charles put it, "the deplorable condition-of women's
education" there. The Ellis gift induced the U.S. Agency for International Development
to complete the funding.

Charles is the much-respected CEO emeritus of John Wiley & Sons, a publishing
company, also much respected, with an academic bias. Charles and Sandi live mostly in
Paris. Despite the debilitating onset of Parkinson's disease. Bill is chairman of Vale's
political science department where he has long taught, specialising in Africa. Several
years ago, Bill took an extended leave to work for both the present and prior Directors of
Central Intelligence. He became interested in Africa because, he said, "no one else was."
Bill's wife, Anne Marie, lectures at Yale on public health, including in Africa.

World Education, Inc. ("a modest title," Bill remarked) is the nonprofit, based in Boston,
with programs in the U.S. as well as abroad. Its budget has grown to a relatively modest
$30 million, small compared to Save the Children and CARE. In Mali, it finances
community-based teaching to women and girls of reading, arithmetic, child care and
family planning. Muslim society has traditionally denied women education.

The four visited a WEI-snpported school built by the local parents' association. "The
unguarded enthusiasm of the pupils, some with infants in iheir laps, was touching, as was
that of the teachers," Charles said. Bill added, 'Tm trained to be skeptical if not cynical,
but this organization has won my heart." If the program succeeds in Mali, WEI could try
exporting it to other countries with similar needs.



Mali pupils at the blackboard with their teacher (Bill at the extreme right).

 
Bill and Charles with some of the Mali pupils.

Bill addressing a Mali village council.

Bill, Anne Marie, Charles and Sandi in a classroom in Mali.