Today is
the ‘International Day of the Girl’ and Save Our Needy is celebrating girls
across the world. Please join us in the fight to keep girls in school and help secure
their future.
Although most
developing countries have made considerable progress in reducing the gender gap
in school enrollment over the past decade, significant gaps remain. Estimates
show that many countries will not meet the education Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) by 2015.
WHAT YOU
SHOULD KNOW ABOUT GIRL-CHILD EDUCATION.
- Worldwide, girls constitute over half of the children out of school. Only 30 percent of all girls are enrolled in secondary school. In many countries, less than one third of university students are women. The average sub-Saharan African girl from a low-income, rural household gets less than two years of schooling and never learns to read and write, to add and subtract, as opposed to the average sub-Saharan African boy who fully completes primary education.
- In 1999, around 106 million children were out of primary school. Almost 61 million (58%) were girls compared to 45 million (42%) boys.
- In 2009, around 35 million girls were still out of school compared to 31 million boys.
- Although the gap in gender parity has decreased substantially, there are still many more girls out of primary school than boys.
- Almost ½ of the world’s out of school girls are in SSA. Around ¼ are in South Asia.
- In South Asia, the region’s total number of out-of-school girls dropped from 23 million girls to 9.5 million since 1999.
- In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of out-of-school girls has decreased more slowly, from 25 million in 1999 to 17 million in 2008.
REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD SUPPORT OUR CAUSE
- Education is a human right, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
- Girls’ education is a strategic development investment – evidence shows that countries with greater gender equality are more likely to have higher economic growth.
- The systematic exclusion of girls and women from school and the labor force translates into a less educated workforce, inefficient allocation of labor, lost productivity, and consequently diminished progress in economic development.
- There is a multiplier effect to educating girls and women. Educated women tend to be healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn more income, have fewer children, and provide better health care and education to their children, all of which eventually improves the well-being of all individuals and can lift households out of poverty. These benefits also transmit across generations, as well as to communities at large.
- Children who are born to educated mothers are less likely to be stunted or malnourished. Each additional year of maternal education also reduces the child mortality rate by 2 percent.
- Women with a primary school education are 13 percent more likely to know that condoms can reduce their risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. An education can help decrease the spreading of this virus by promoting safer sexual practices.
- Education empowers women to make healthy decisions about their lives. For example, women in Mali with a secondary level education or higher have an average of 3 children, while those with no education have an average of 7.
Reasons such as poverty, early marriage and pregnancy, violence at school, gender norms, distance to school and the high cost of education are still keeping girls out of school. It is crucial to ensure that nearly 4 billion girls and women around the world have the same chances to receive an education as boys and men. Do something now!!! Contact us at saveourneedy@gmail.com to learn about our girl-child projects.
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