Where does a girl dream about working as an engineer and running her country’s power facility? It certainly was not the first career choice for Queen Esther, a Nigerian schoolgirl who had always dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. But after spending a day at her father’s workplace, Nigeria’s main electricity utility, EkoElectricity Distribution Co., […]
How does giving girls a proper education impact their health and well-being? Education is essential to fight poverty and all its corollaries: hunger, disease, resource degradation, exploitation and despair. In low-income countries, mothers who have completed primary school are more likely to seek appropriate health care for their children. A child born to a literate mother is 50 percent more likely to survive past the age of 5.
We are in rural Zambia, and it took about two minutes to realize that I was in the presence of a good teacher. Since 2010 when USAID committed to getting 100 million more children reading and learning — 1 million in Zambia — we’ve helped that country boost teaching skills in the rural schools serving thousands of kids that live too far from public institutions.
The United States is making an investment in Malawi — almost $100 million dollars over five years. But how is this going to change day-to-day life for a girl like Martha? The answer: “If Martha learns to read, she will be a more informed adult. If she can’t read, she’ll stick to the old ways of doing things.”
Two hundred and fifty million children in the world cannot read according to the recently released Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Teaching and Learning: Achieving Quality for All; 130 million of them are in primary school. If these children do not learn to read they will have fewer opportunities and struggle with learning for the rest of their lives.
Regina Anek, a deputy director for gender at South Sudan’s Ministry of Education in Eastern Equatoria, just saved a 14-year old girl Read more >>
