Africa: Homegrown Approaches to Achieving Quality Education for Girls

 

Photo: Foundation for Inclusive Community Help

Foundation for Inclusive Community Help, a rural grassroots organization in Uganda, provides support for formal and informal education and promotes job creation for youth.

guest column By Emmanuel Otoo

Education is so much more than an opportunity to go to school; it is an opportunity to determine one’s future, to establish a voice within and outside of one’s community, and to dream beyond the limits of one’s circumstances.

Education has the capacity to lift people out of poverty and to interrupt intergenerational poverty by equipping children and youth with the skills needed to obtain employment and command higher wages (Haveman and Wolfe, 2001; Huisman and Smits, 2009; Post, 2002).

Education also brings with it countless social benefits, such as an improvement in self-esteem, knowledge about one’s environment, and information on how to make a difference and how to practice a healthy lifestyle.

While education is beneficial for all children, educating girls is particularly important. According to the World Bank 2016, quality education helps girls to find their voice—to “speak and be listened to.” Educating vulnerable girls in marginalized communities and rural areas also leads to a reduction in child marriage, teen pregnancy, at-risk behaviors, female genital cutting, and violence against women and girls. When girls are educated, cycles of gender bias against girls and women are effectively disrupted.

Furthermore, the Global Education Monitoring Report 2016 found that when educated girls become mothers, they are more likely to seek consistent prenatal care for themselves and immunizations and other medical care for their young children, passing the benefits of education on to the next generation. When girls are educated, they are better equipped to lift up themselves, their families, and their communities.

Although the importance of girls’ education is widely acknowledged, access to quality education is still beyond the reach of too many girls. Across Africa, several reasons account for this situation, including forced child labor and marriage. Various explanations have been given for why families choose to marry off their girls or send them to work instead of to school. Scholars suggest that a lower financial return on investing in girls’ education poverty, low school quality, and religious values and patriarchal norms all contribute to this problem.

The question is, how can we ensure that girls receive the education they deserve to help dismantle the structures of poverty and enhance societal well-being? More than that, how can we ensure that girls receive a quality education in a girl-friendly environment, develop their own voice, are consistently engaged, and feel safe from harm? At the grassroots level, this means identifying which practices are transformative in girls’ education; which practices deserve our full exploration and dedication; and how we can move away from responding to the symptoms of a lack of quality education and focus on addressing root causes. As a believer in the game-changing efforts of grassroots initiatives, I will share a few ideas in that direction.

To achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4—“ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”—holistic, innovative, and gender-sensitive approaches are critical. Grassroots education strategies that are woven into the fabric of communities and facilitate self-sustainable development demonstrate promising results, especially when it comes to reaching the most vulnerable girls and ensuring access to education, retention in school, effective learning, and advancement to the next grade level.