Adolescent Girls' Education in Somalia (AGES)

The AGES project supported 90,698 girls in Somalia.

The project targeted the hardest to reach, out-of-school girls. It focused on girls engaged in child labour, married and divorced girls, internally displaced persons, girls from minority clans and excluded groups, and pastoralists. Many of these girls had never attended school. The project used a combination of formal and alternative education pathways to provide flexible learning options for girls who faced multiple barriers to effective learning. It worked with girls, families, communities, schools and governments to promote lasting change in education.

Main activities

• Delivering an Accelerated Basic Education curriculum, including primary content, financial literacy and numeracy.
• Providing teacher training and tailored coaching to address gaps in the quality of subject delivery (mainly literacy and numeracy), and ensure equitable and inclusive classroom practices.
• Developing a mobile-based e-learning platform tailored for ultra-marginalised girls and teachers.
• Delivering life skills courses including literacy, numeracy, financial literacy, savings and basic business planning, leadership skills and sexual reproductive health to out-of-school girls.
• Providing seed funding and microfinance for village savings and loan associations (VSLAs), training adolescents on VSLA and creating links with Islamic microfinance institutions.
• Introducing girls’ and boys’ empowerment forums and engaging parents, men, boys and religious leaders to build awareness and promote gender equity and education for girls.
• Working closely with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Higher Education to strengthen supervisory capacity and support the development of special needs and inclusive education in Somalia.
• Building a knowledge base around disability in Somalia, increasing community awareness, training teachers and addressing financial barriers faced by girls with disabilities when accessing education.