molly melching: we saw this great hunger for education among the populations.arn to read and write. they wanted to learn more about health and how they could prevent illnesses. fred: it grew into adult education, first for women, eventually everyone, and focused on the causes of various health problems. molly: they wanted to learn what happened to them. we didn't even bring up fgc until much later in the program. and, meanwhile, they had learned what are the practices that may harm and lead to problems later on in life. fred: as fgc came up organically, she says, the newly acquired health education helped link the practice to its myriad painful short and long-term consequences, infections, hemorrhage, even sterility and death. tostan's approach includes teaching about human rights and, in discussing fgc, she says, the message was one of support, not shame. molly: we understand that you did this not because you wanted to harm your daughters. and no woman wants that her daughter not be able to marry because no one respects her. so they had no choice. and suddenly

fred: on a bumpy ride to the declaration, i asked molly melching what's bringing about change here.t's not a directive to eradicate, but a decision to abandon cutting. >> we need to abandon ourselves. it's not because someone tells us to. fred: melching is globally recognized as founder of a group called tostan, or breakthrough, best known for helping communities across several african countries abandon fgc. it's not exactly what the danville, illinois native set out to do when she moved to senegal as a student then peace corps volunteer, a long time ago. >> i would not have dreamed that i would be here 50 years, although this is a magical though although this is a magical country. it's beautiful. fred: she began in education, working to develop children's reading materials in local languages. in senegal, books, if available at all, were in french, the former colonial language that few can read or even speak. with a small grant, she began in the village of sam ndiaye, where she also lived for 3 years. >> we saw this great hunger for education among the populations. they wanted to le