Thank you for this excellent article, Mr. Alter. I appreciate the effective way in which you???ve summarized the benefits of providing education for girls in the developing world. I work with a non profit organization, AfricAid (www.africaid.com) that does just this: provides primary- and secondary-level education to girls in Africa. We have been supporting Tanzanian girls, specifically, in their educational goals for the past seven years, and we have learned many lessons in the process. Most importantly, we have learned that just getting girls in the classroom is not enough in and of itself to create meaningful opportunities for change. These girls must have access to a high-quality education in order to capitalize on their educational opportunity. This involves ??? as you indicated ??? ensuring that adequately-trained teachers are in the classroom, that these girls have access to learning materials such as textbooks and basic supplies, and that their school experience is tangibly connected with the realities of their political, cultural and economic environments. This means, on one hand, tailoring cookie-cutter models of education to local cultural landscapes in order to help parents understand why schooling might be relevant to their daughters, and what the benefits of education will be for them, individually, and as members of a larger community. It also means ensuring that these young women are equipped while in school with the vocational tools and leadership skills that will open up professional opportunities where they have none today, or enable them to become leaders and role models for others in their home communities. This is exactly what we at AfricAid are working to do.
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Education: It’s Not Just About the Boys. Get Girls Into School.
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The waste of human capital is incalculable. Consider that only 5 percent of children with disabilities get any education at all in the developing world. Countries like Kenya and Uganda, which have abolished fees, have seen a flood of new students, with enrollments surging by 30 percent or more. So why haven't other developing nations followed their example? It's not the loss of fee revenue but the absence of a large-enough education infrastructure to sustain the influx of new students. Five years after abolishing fees, Kenya still needs 40,000 new teachers. Officials there say they can't meet the need without more consistent funding.
Donor nations and NGOs are increasingly reaching a consensus that global education, especially for girls, is the keystone to the arch of development. The Millennium Development Goals of universal primary education with gender equity are among the hottest topics at international conferences. But Sperling calls these "the world's most ambitious and pathetic goals—ambitious because so many countries are not on track to reach them; pathetic because of the idea that five or six years of primary education will suffice when there's no real demonstrable advantage without eight."
The challenge extends beyond funding to changing the culture of the developing world. Fathers must be convinced that if their daughters go to school, they will learn enough math to help them in the market. Mothers must learn that while sending their daughters to school might mean one fewer pair of hands to help around the house, their families will be better off in the long run. "This is not a disease without a known cure," says Sperling. "These things work everywhere." If these become the mom-and-apple-pie values of the developing world, we'll all win.
© 2008
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