When I think of girls’ education in Africa, I dream of a continent where women and men are treated equally. I long for a continent where women are equal contributors to society; a continent where girls receive the same opportunities as their male counterparts so they can tap into their inherent potential. I would love to see every single girl have access to a free, quality education in Africa.
Only 1 percent of Tanzanian girls complete secondary school. The numbers are not much better for boys, but it is clear that girls have a much harder road to travel to get an education. Girls face great obstacles to their education including unaffordable school fees, families privileging sons education over daughters, expectations of hours of household chores and being responsible for younger siblings, and high dropout rates with pregnancies, to name but a few. It is even more difficult for girls living in rural communities where there are often great distances between schools.
The facts are stark. In 2014, UNHCR – the UN Refugee Agency – estimated that 51.2 million people were living as refugees or internally displaced persons globally. What might seem like a temporary predicament often leads to a long-term reality. In fact, the average length of displacement for refugees is 17 years, and 20 years for those internally displaced.
by Joyce Mkandawire and Dr. Denise Raquel Dunning,
Malawi banned child marriage last month. The new legislation increasing the legal age of marriage from 15 to 18 is a major victory for girls in Malawi, and a game changer for girls’ education everywhere.
The opportunity to access something as basic as education shouldn’t be political. Yet, 2014 bore witness to more attacks on schools than any time in the past 40 years and global emergencies like Ebola and conflicts in the Middle East forced millions of children out of school. Never has the goal of getting kids into school and keeping them there safely been more important.
With Education for All as our over-riding goal, The Nobelity Project is celebrating ten years as a non-profit, a decade of telling inspiring stories and working to take inspired actions. With a full-time staff of just two (my co-founder and Executive Director Christy Pipkin and a Program Coordinator), we are constantly searching for avenues with a relatively large impact on both education issues and real-world results.
By Sofia Mussa, Malwina Maslowska & Kelsey Dalrymple,
“For her it was just the fees…she feels like if her parents had paid for the fees, she wouldn’t have even gotten pregnant. Because she really wanted to study and complete her course in the Polytechnic, and get herself something to do.”
This is a common experience faced by adolescent mothers in Kenya and South Africa. In Kenya alone, an estimated 13,000 girls leave school every year due to teenage pregnancy
Educate The Children works intensively in a specific geographic area for a period of several years, and in mid-2014 we began working in a new area. We have identified and begun working collaboratively with the personnel at 31 public schools, all of which will receive various types of support in the years to come.
Schools on the front line in the fight against sexual abuse in Haiti Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is a significant public health concern for all girls and women in Haiti and particularly in the urban center of Port-au-Prince. One in three women in Haiti have experienced sexual violence and half of all rape victims are under age 17 at the time of the crime (Amnesty International 2008)
My memories of childhood are peppered with many things—school, recess, Saturday morning cartoons, friends and more. A few things that are not there are long days, back-breaking, dangerous and hazardous work, abusive and unsafe locations and exploitative situations and people.