Africa has the highest number of out-of-school children as well as the highest gender disparity rate of all regions. The challenges to education are evident in enrollment, dropout and completion rates for disadvantaged groups and these are heightened for girls. The kinds of constraints girls face include: early marriage, child labour, teenage pregnancy (and lack of effective re-entry policies), as well as HIV/AIDS. While there are examples of good practice, they often target small groups or specific communities, with the result that a large number of girls are left outside the education system.
ICDI believes that it is imperative to develop an integrated approach aimed at universalizing secondary education for girls i.e. ensuring that all girls enroll in and complete secondary education.
This project will adapt the successful experience of MV Foundation in India to a urban slum in Uganda and a rural area in Kenya.
Description
Objective
The Overall Objective of this project is to disseminate learning from a successful experience in India to a context of similar, though not identical, gaps and deficits in girls’ education in Africa.
The good practice from India is provided by the MV Foundation – a non-governmental organization that has achieved demonstrable success in universalizing education and eliminating child labour in its project locations and has considerable expertise in disseminating its model.
Target
The two African countries selected for setting up pilot projects are Kenya and Uganda. In each country a local NGO specializing in girls’ education is paired with a local university to enable data collection and documentation of the experience.
The project will target 600 girls in the secondary school age group in a rural area in Kenya (Nyanza province) and an urban slum in Uganda (Kampala). Two distinct localities have been selected to validate the replicability of the model and strengthen strategies for universalization of secondary education for girls.
Activities
The project will catalyze meaningful South-South knowledge sharing, collaboration and capacity building for the development of demand-driven, cost-effective, locally driven and sustainable programmes for universalizing secondary education for girls.
