World Centric: Women's Global Education Project

World Centric + Women's Global Education Project

$50,000.00 from profits from fiscal year 2019

Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa face many barriers to attending school, contributing to cyclical poverty and the under-development of entire communities. In Tharaka region in rural Kenya attendance rates for secondary girls are as low as 11% and one in four girls under the age of eighteen are married. When girls are educated, their families are healthier, they have fewer children, they wed later, and they have more opportunities to generate income.

Women's Global Education Project's mission is to empower young people in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa, particularly women and girls, through education to build better lives and foster more equitable communities. Since 2004, their girls' education and literacy programs have impacted over 10,000 people in 73 of the most impoverished communities in Kenya and Senegal.

WGEP’s Sisters to School program in Kenya promotes equal access to education providing scholarships, reproductive health workshops, mentoring, after school clubs, community mobilization and an alternative to the harmful cultural practice of female genital mutilation. 60% of their program recipients graduated secondary school compared to a regional passing rate of 39%, shifting the cultural paradigm towards gender equality and building healthy, productive communities. With funding from World Centric, 180 girls will be provided access to WGEP services.

The Impact

Primary School Scholarships for 12 girls
Secondary School Scholarships for 138 girls
University Scholarships for 30 girls
All scholarships include school fees, school supplies, soap, oil, sanitary towels, mosquito nets, uniforms, exam fees, and meetings.

Indirect results:

Household income increases as girls finish school and enter the workforce. The return on one year of girls’ secondary correlates with <25% wage increase (World Bank).
Better access to education equips women with the skills to adapt to the effects of climate change and gives them influence over how their communities mitigate it.
As a result of an increase in enrollment rates and decrease of FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), we expect a 20% increase in retention rate over baseline (99-100% retention rate). We also expect changes in attitude favoring girls’ education, accepting Alternative Rights of Passage as an alternative to FGM, and raising women’s voices in decision making.

About Women's Global Education Project

Women’s Global Education Project (WGEP) is an internationally recognized, award winning approach to women's empowerment. Recognized as an innovative model of best practice in Girls' Education by the United Nations, WGEP leaves no stone unturned in the quest for universal education, gender equality and empowerment of women, the factors critical to a society’s development. WGEP works in partnership with two local community organizations to implement its Sisters to School Program: Femme Plus in Senegal and Tharaka Women’s Welfare Program (TWWP) in Kenya. Local partners on the ground guarantees that the program is community-led and focused. Together we formulate a partner-driven, highly contextualized, and comprehensive approach that takes into account local conditions (poverty, gender bias, early marriage, FGM/C) to ensure that the obstacles preventing girls from attending and succeeding in school are dismantled.