Educating Nigerian Girls in New Enterprises (ENGINE)

Project completed implementation in October 2020

Through innovative partnerships with communities and the public and private sectors, the ENGINE programme supported 18,050 marginalised girls and young women aged 17 to 23 years old.

ENGINE worked with government schools to improve the quality of teaching and to provide additional literacy and numeracy support to girls. Out-of-school girls were given educational opportunities through flexible learning with tailored modules in government centres or ENGINE learning spaces. ENGINE also worked with government centres to provide better access to childcare. Additionally, girls were supported to set up their own micro-businesses, through help to obtain government ID registration and bank accounts, enabling access to capital.

Activities

• Established 170 learning spaces used for training and academic support for girls and young women.
• Provided business training and employment preparation for young, out-of-school women who were encouraged to choose from a variety of employment opportunities, including setting up their own businesses as micro-retailers, for which assistance was offered.
• Assisted in building institutional capacity to strengthen education provision in government schools and centres, and to secure government and community financing to ensure that activities put in place by the programme could be continued.
• Collaborated with the Ministry of Women Affairs and Agency for Mass Education to achieve literacy and numeracy targets.
• Collaborated with the Ministry of Education to develop teacher handbooks and update the government’s Family Life and HIV Education curriculum.
• Secured the adoption of child and vulnerable adult (CVAP) protection policies at the state, community, and school level. The CVAP referral protocol has been adopted by all four state governments. It details the responsibilities of various agencies, promotes collaboration in the handling of child protection incident and supports coordination of these services, which have previously been fragmented.
• Contributed to the adoption of a code of conduct that provides guidelines for the behaviour of teachers and students. The code of conduct has been adopted for use in schools in the FCT, Kaduna, and Kano. A code of conduct for use in non-formal education centres has been adopted at the federal level for national use. 
  
  Mercy Corps: https://www.mercycorps.org.uk/