Education for Life

The Education for Life project supported 5,701 girls and was implemented by Action Aid in Kenya.

70% of girls reached by the project had never enrolled in school, 30% had some experience with the formal school system but had dropped out, and 30% had at least one form of disability. Some of the girls had experienced violence in the community and/or at school and some were pregnant or young mothers. Many of the girls came from pastoralist communities and/or were heads of their families, orphans or extremely vulnerable. Some had survived situations of conflict and insecurity, such as episodes of cattle rustling and tribal clashes in Isiolo and Garissa.

The project worked with community members and partners to tackle the barriers these girls faced such as child marriage, female genital mutilation, gender norms, stigma, discrimination and violence. The project provided out-of-school girls with opportunities to access quality formal education, entrepreneurship, apprenticeship and vocational training. It worked to improve their literacy, numeracy and life skills through accelerated learning and transition into different pathways. To facilitate this transition, entrepreneurial and financial literacy skills, training, start-up kits and capital for small enterprises were also provided.

Main activities

• Establishing and delivering ‘catch-up’ classes in community spaces and specially trained educators near villages in hard-to-reach areas.
• Providing life skills sessions and psycho-social support in ‘safe spaces’ through sessions led by community mentors.
• Providing assistive devices and specialised Personal Integrated Therapy for girls with disability and learning kits for all children (e.g. learning materials and dignity kits).
• Addressing issues around Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI) through the structured integration of GESI standards by teachers.
• Working closely with the community to challenge negative gender norms around girls’ education, early marriage, pregnancy and female genital mutilation.

The project in number

Lessons learned

The use of the Community Led Participatory Change Plans helped to identify different vulnerabilities among the girls. The project considered vulnerability information and the barriers each individual girl faced while designing catch-up centre activities (learning days and learning times) and adapted the centres accordingly.

The provision of relevant and adapted learning materials was one of the biggest drivers of learning. The project adapted learning material to ensure it was relevant to the everyday life of the girls and to ensure it was locally contextualised. For example, the characters in the literacy curriculum led similar lives to the project girls and their lives and challenges reflected girls’ everyday realities.

It takes time to change girls’ and communities’ perceptions and practices around sexual and reproductive health. The project found some resistance amongst more conservative communities who generally do not engage in open discussions on sexual reproductive health. Where resistance was strong, it was sometimes more effective to approach sexual reproductive health from a health perspective through health centres.

Support by the girls’ family members, caregivers, and particularly husbands, for their education was a key driver of attendance, learning and transition. It was important to identify a lack of support at the household level early in the project and to continuously work with community members to change attitudes to girls’ education.

ActionAid: http://www.actionaid.org/