Campaign for Female Education and Pearsons have pledged to work together to fund the secondary education of 60 000 vulnerable girls in Zimbabwe and Tanzania.
The partnership has been awarded a grant under the prestigious Girls’ Education Challenge, launched by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, to give one million of the world’s poorest girls the chance to improve their lives through education.
The programme builds on Camfed’s 20 years’ experience in getting girls into school across Africa, and harnesses Pearson’s wealth of expertise in providing innovative learning and training materials.
Lucy Lake, Chief Executive Officer of Camfed International, said this was a unique opportunity to explore how to transform educational opportunities for vulnerable girls in the two Southern African countries.
“It will embed a legacy that benefits generations to come,” she said in a statement from the United Kingdom.
She said the venture had the full support of the Ministries of Education in Zimbabwe and Tanzania and thus represented a major opportunity to demonstrate the value and impact of a cross-sectoral partnership in support of girls’ education.
United Kingdom national, Ann Cotton, founded Camfed in 1993 following her visit to Zimbabwe to investigate why girls’ school enrolment in rural areas was low.
She established that contrary to the common assumption that families were not sending girls to school for cultural reasons, poverty was the main problem. Girls were rarely chosen as boys had a better chance of getting a paid job after graduation.
Camfed’s successful model has now been replicated in more than 2 000 communities in Ghana, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia. More than 1, 9 million children in the poorest areas of these countries have benefited from the organisation’s innovative education programmes.
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Besides formal education, some of these girls need career guidance, and support in whatever subject or sport they excel in.