KOICA Project “Better Life for Girls” to Fund Girls Education

In order to initiate better girls education around the world, the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) has worked in several countries to improve access to education. In its most recent effort, it granted $6 million to UNICEF in August 2017. The aim of this grant is to assure better health, protection and widespread education for Jordanian children, as well as Syrian refugee children who have found a new home in Jordan.

The funding will be put to a variety of beneficial uses, such as health education, reliable water sanitation, psychological counseling and amplified education for children with disabilities. In addition, specific psychological help will be given to women and girls who may be victims of gender-based violence, discrimination or child marriage.

The funding comes as part of KOICA’s five-year-long, $200 million program, “Better Life for Girls,” which aims to increase the amount of girls in schools in developing countries, better the quality of the education they receive and ensure that no girl is victim to being treated unfairly or receiving a lesser education on account of her gender.

In July of 2016, KOICA brought the “Better Life for Girls” program to Uganda, pledging $5 million to adolescent girls’ education over the course of two and a half years. They promised an emphasis on technology, educating parents as well as children on the harm of early pregnancy and child marriage and encouraging men and boys to join the efforts in reducing abuse and mistreatment of women.

As KOICA points out, almost 62 million girls cannot go to school. Poor families in third-world countries often prioritize boys’ education over girls, who are forced to drop out of school or forgo attending altogether. Many girls are needed at home, are subjected to child marriage, or become pregnant at a young age, restricting their ability to get an education. The Uganda Demographic and Health Survey states that one in four girls from ages 15 to 19 is pregnant or has a child, meaning that she often cannot go to school.

But it is education that will empower women to be able to make decisions about their own health, to start a lucrative career that will allow her independence, and to contribute to her own future and her society’s future with her intellectual prowess. Not only does KOICA wish to encourage this, the agency wants to spread awareness about the unfair treatment of girls at schools in developing countries and explore their untapped potential.

Another effort from the “Better Life for Girls” program was made in the Gaza strip in February of 2016. KOICA pledged $500,000 to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The UNRWA’s technical and vocational education and training program helps highlight job opportunities and provides training in those areas to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, particularly women. KOICA’s contribution enabled the UNRWA to reevaluate its program and ensure that it would guide bright and innovative refugees to employment.

The “Better Life for Girls” program serves to remind that there is no limit to the new heights that may be reached with more women at the helm, with more girls learning how to make society a better place, with more female minds behind the world’s newest inventions, political advancements, medical discoveries and more.

Expanding girls education will improve the community and open the world to millions more people who have the potential to lead, create, heal and discover. It will change the world for the better.

– Charlotte Armstrong

Photo: Flickr

Fighting Violence Against Women: Eight Methods

Gender-based violence is a human rights violation. The use of violence against women (VAW) and children as a war tactic is inhumane and a way for extremist men to keep women “in their place”. Activists fighting for human rights often face considerable hostility, and many VAW activists recognize that creative activism along with a proclivity for affecting change from within goes a long way towards raising awareness of gender-based violence. While an innumerable number of people work tirelessly to bring positive changes to women’s lives, these eight campaigns are creatively fighting violence against women.

1. Maps4Aid – India

India ranks eighth on WondersList’s ten worst countries for women. The statistics are mind-numbing. Around 70 percent of women in India are victims of domestic violence. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, a woman is a victim of crime every three minutes, a woman is raped every 15 minutes, a dowry death occurs every 77 minutes and around 100 million women and girls are estimated to be victim of human trafficking. In a country with such staggering crime rates, P. Sheemer created the Maps4Aid app, which uses SMS and email to submit reports of any crime committed against women. This data helps map out the areas that are the most unsafe for women to travel in. Eventually, this data will be used to map out the most dangerous streets and areas across India and to press authorities to provide extra security measures in these areas.

2. MenEngage Alliance – Kenya

MenEngage Alliance is an initiative of international NGOs to involve men and boys in promoting gender equality. Gender equality cannot be achieved in isolation; men need to be a part of the solution. The campaign aims to educate and work with men and boys around the world to change their perceptions of masculinity and to learn healthier ways to relate to each other. In addition, the campaign also aims to advocate for newer and better laws to end VAW, including female genital mutilation.

3. The Burka Avenger – Pakistan

Creating alternative narratives in line with popular culture can be a powerful tool to reach a wider audience with maximum impact. This is one of the reasons why countries like India and Pakistan are using comic strips as tools to reach its younger generation. The Peabody Award-winning “Burka Avenger” is a children’s cartoon series about a good-natured female Pakistani school teacher with secret martial arts training who dons a burka to tackle a range of issues, from discrimination against women to environmental protection to fighting polio.

4. Fathers’ club – Haiti

Most gender-based violence campaigns exclude men. In Haiti, Rorny Amile, a father from Haiti, started a fathers’ club to initiate a conversation on issues like meaningful consent and the importance of not using violence. The members receive training from CARE, an international organization with a mission to save lives, defeat poverty and achieve social justice. The organization spreads its message by going door-to-door in their community to talk to men about violence against women. According to Amile, “children see their fathers beating their mothers and some carry on the cycle of violence when they grow up. We’re trying to show other fathers it’s not okay to do that”.

5. Bead Game – Worldwide

The international organization CARE is creatively fighting violence against women by designing innovative games that challenge societal taboos. The Bead Game is designed by CARE to address issues related to the age-old blame that women take on if they are unable to produce a boy. With the help of two colored beads representing the X and Y chromosomes, the game demonstrates how the father determines the sex of a child. These domestic and cultural misunderstandings often result in gender-based violence, a problem CARE is committed to ending through community outreach, education and simple activities like the bead game.

6. Paradise – Norway

Photographer Walter Astrada is known the world over for using photography as a tool to fight VAW. Recently, he took his fight to Norway to show the world that gender-based violence is not just a third-world problem; it occurs even in a country with an impeccable reputation as one of the wealthiest, safest, well- educated and most democratic countries in the world.

7. Affordable Wood-Fired Stoves – Sudan

Zam Zam camp in North Darfur is home to 200,000 refugees fleeing the civil war in Sudan. The women of Zam Zam risk rape by Sudanese militiamen every time they leave the camp to collect wood for their cooking fires. If they chose otherwise, they would have to spend scarce money on firewood. Ashok Gadgil worked with Darfuri women and other engineers to create an affordable wood-fired stove that uses less wood. The stove reduced assaults, saved families money and made the homes of thousands of refugees healthier by considerably reducing carbon emissions.

8. Orange Day – United Nations

In light of the recent barrage of cases of gender-based violence, the United Nations designated the 25^th of every month as “Orange Day.” The UNiTE campaign, started by the United Nations Secretary-General’s, is dedicated to raising awareness and ending VAW. Orange Day is creatively fighting violence against women by calling upon everyone to mobilize people and highlighting issues relevant to preventing and ending VAW every month.

– Jagriti Misra

Photo: Flickr

Menstrual Hygiene Management and Girls’ Education in Uganda

Education, especially for girls, is one of the best ways to increase a developing country’s welfare. A nation’s GDP can rise by three percent when the number of girls in school increases by 10 percent. On an individual level, every year a girl stays in school, her potential income increases by about 15 to 25 percent. These numbers show that education in Uganda is, just like everywhere else, an ever-important issue.

In Uganda, girls have a low track record of completing their education. Studies show that only 22 percent of Ugandan girls are enrolled in secondary school, contrasting the 91 percent enrolled in in primary school.

Analysts have often pointed out that early marriages and social stigmas keep girls from receiving a complete education in Uganda. But there’s a simpler, more intimate reason behind those causes: menstruation.

This topic remains uncomfortable and awkward in developed countries, but Ugandan girls face this problem on an entirely different level. Many developed countries, including Uganda, have myths and stigmas surrounding periods that shame girls when they menstruate. As a result, most girls have no understanding of what is happening to their bodies or how to take care of themselves.

Adding to this difficulty is the lack of availability of feminine hygiene products. Drugstores that carry disposable pads, tampons and other products can be more than 40 minutes away. Even then, these products are usually imported and are too expensive for most Ugandan women to afford.

Desperate to stop the monthly flow, Ugandan women often resort to using pieces of cloth, shreds of foam mattresses, toilet paper, newspapers, banana plant fibers and even leaves. Not only are these options ineffective and uncomfortable, but are also extremely unhygienic, putting girls at risk for diseases.

About half of Ugandan girls skip three days of school every month because they do not have any feminine hygiene products and do not want to stain their clothes. As the absences stack up, many girls find it too hard to continue their education and eventually drop out. Social stigmas also place pressure on girls to marry once they get their periods and not remain in school.

However, despite the struggle, many girls want to stay in school and complete their education in Uganda, and they’re getting help from several international organizations to do so. Wateraid, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to provide clean water and sanitation efforts to developing countries around the world, started hygiene clubs in Ugandan schools. At these clubs, girls learn about menstruation and how to make their own pads and products.

One of these clubs, located at St. Mary’s School in northeastern Uganda, has taken things a step further. This hygiene club travels to other skills singing, dancing, and even rapping about their periods. This group of girls wants to raise awareness about the stigmas surrounding menstruation and promote education in Uganda.

Despite the work of Wateraid and other groups, many girls in Uganda are still skipping school because they don’t have feminine hygiene products. Wateraid ambitiously plans to supply the necessary sanitation products, from tampons to toilets, for every child and every school in every part of the world by 2030.

On an entrepreneurial level, start-up AFRIpads donates reusable pads to women in Uganda and other areas where women do not have easy access to menstrual products. These organizations hope that soon every girl in Uganda will be able to attend school every day of the school year, whether she has her period or not—and no one will shame her if she does.

– Sydney Cooney

Photo: Google

Providing Bicycles to Families in Africa Improves Education

For many children living in rural villages in Africa, the most valuable educational tool is not a pencil or a notebook: it is a bicycle. Several organizations are providing bicycles to families in Africa as a means of bringing education, health services and economic stability to entire communities.

In Zambia, children often have to walk miles to get to school. They might arrive late, miss early classes and face an embarrassing punishment from the teacher. This is a particular problem for girls, who are expected to complete household chores before even starting on their journey.

In 2014, World Bicycle Relief donated 100 bikes to students and faculty at a primary school in Zambia. Now that she rides her bike to school, one girl said she can put all of her energy into concentrating in class, and she has time to study in the evenings.

Providing bicycles to families in Africa also allows them to improve their economic situations. Steel workers and chicken farmers can carry larger and heavier loads to the market. In Zambia, dairy farmers have increased their deliveries by up to 25 percent. Mine workers and door-to-door salesmen use bicycles to shorten their commutes. They save time and energy and are able to afford necessities like food and school supplies.

Women in Sierra Leone and Ghana are responsible for the vast majority of the household chores. As with the men, women use the bicycles to balance heavy materials and travel long distances. For women and girls, however, owning a bike is a form of protection–against sexual assault. Put simply, no man can outrun them anymore.

Despite this, it is far more unlikely for a woman to have access to a bicycle. In places like Sierra Leone, women are discouraged from riding bikes in the belief that it causes them to lose their virginity. Boys and men commandeer the household bicycle, claiming that the women don’t have time to learn how to ride it. However, many organizations are working against this idea: for example, the Village Bicycle Project operates a month-long Learn to Ride program for women and girls in Ghana and Sierra Leone.

Presenting one woman with a bike can improve life for an entire community. In villages in Zambia where HIV is prevalent, taking care of the sick often falls to Community Healthcare Volunteers (CHVs). They care for elderly men and women, orphaned children and those suffering from AIDS. After receiving a bicycle, one female healthcare worker was able to increase the number of patients she visited per day from four to 18.

Providing bicycles to families in Africa not only empowers rural villagers, but it also has positive implications for the environment. The organization Ghana Bamboo Bikes constructs bicycles out of bamboo, an eco-friendly material that, unlike wood, will not result in damage to Ghana’s rainforests.
The bicycles are built to be light, yet stable–good for navigating the roads of rural Ghana. The organization also teaches young men and women with little education how to build the bikes, offering them a job skill that will prove valuable as the demand for bicycles in Africa continues to grow.

– Emilia Otte

Women’s Mobile Internet Use in Africa Soars, Surpasses Men’s

Bill Gates once referred to the Internet as “the town square for the global village of tomorrow.” Even with fewer Internet users than the rest of the world, Africa has begun to find its way to the so-called town square, as women’s mobile Internet use in Africa has increased dramatically in this part of the world.

A recent survey found that the number of women who use mobile Internet in Africa has surpassed that of men, as more and more women use the Internet in search of entertainment and tools for empowerment.

Global software company Opera and digital reading non-profit Worldreader joined forces to conduct a survey on the Internet habits of people in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.

Opera ran a survey of 1,500 men and women between the ages of 14 and 44 to better understand how people use the Internet on their mobile devices. These results were combined with data from Worldreader, which provided information on the mobile reading habits of 50,000 of the app’s users in those three countries.

Together, Opera and Worldreader found that women are equally as “tech-savvy” as men. Women use their Internet browsers just as frequently as men do, and 60% of women surveyed in Kenya and Nigeria reported using the Internet over eight times a day. Not only do women use the Internet as much as men, but they also tend to purchase larger data packages in all three countries.

In addressing these statistics, it is important to understand why women are using the Internet so frequently. The survey found that two motives—entertainment and empowerment—were the reasons behind women’s Internet use.

Across the board, women in these three countries engaged with a broader variety of content on the Internet than their male counterparts did. One in three women who took part in this survey said that they used the Internet to browse lifestyle, music, and entertainment content.

However, women found it just as important to use the Internet for empowerment purposes. Many women were interested in ways that they could improve their lives in areas such as education, property rights, and health. They also emphasized the importance of having access to the news.

For many women, access to the Internet could be the key to greater educational opportunity. As women’s mobile Internet use in Africa continues to increase, more and more women will be equipped with the tools they need to empower themselves and improve their quality of life.

– Jennifer Faulkner

Photo: Flickr