An entrenched system of patriarchy means that girls are grossly devalued and excluded in key arenas. Education is one such area. This project will empower girls through eradicating current barriers to their education - including young aged pregnancies and child marriage. Girls will be sensitised about their fundamental rights and a mass community awareness-raising campaign to redefine how they are viewed and treated.
An entrenched system of patriarchy means that girls are grossly devalued and excluded in key arenas. Education is one such area. The female literacy rate is just 60%. Deprived of education, many girls are married off as minors, and pregnancies at a young age are common. The prevalence of child labour and violence against girls in the home has also contributed to the situation where the number of female students dropping out of secondary school is double than that of boys.
The project will directly tackle current barriers to girls’ education. First, it will equip them with the material and out-of-school support needed to attend school, such as home visits. Peer education through the formation of Girls’ Groups will take place - the focus will be on rights sensitisation issues such as reproductive health care, gender discrimination and child marriage. These efforts will be fortified by a mass awareness generation campaign targeting all stake-holders in the community
This project will break social barriers to empower 450 girls to access education. Girls will be made capable of accessing the opportunities of the market economy. We will demonstrate the success of this project by witnessing an attitudinal change in how the community view the status of girls and their self-perceptions. Quantitative indicators will include an increase in school retention rates of 70% over 3 years and a rise in the marriage age of girls from 13-14 years to 18-19 years.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
