The voice of a girl standing up for her own rights can be very loud. Her voice is even louder and stronger when the community stands with her and when policy makers enable the environment for her rights to be fulfilled.

Our work revolves around strengthening the links the individual rights holders have with their community and the policymakers.

We are here to tell you more about how grass-roots monitoring and transparency work, inclusive policy dialogue, and an enabling transnational environment are making a difference in girls' education rights.

The largest education advocacy fund in the world has a strong focus on girls

In 2019 GPE reinforced its commitment to support civil society advocacy with the introduction of Education Out Loud.

Gender focused advocacy is prominent across Education Out Loud’s portfolio of activities with many grantees contributing to national policy making with diagnostics on root causes of gender inequality grounded in community realities. For example, 20% of grantees focus on girls’ education, gender equality and education rights for teen mothers.

This blog offers a view of the range of gender-focused work and different types of civil society organizations supported by GPE - a national education coalition, a national accountability organization and a transnational advocacy alliance.

Evidence and local support: key strategies driving policy change in Philippines

E-Net Philippines has been leading its 89 member organizations on advocacy work towards a more gender equitable education system since 2000.

In more than 20 years of work, the main lessons we have learned is that evidence is key to having leverage in winning political support. Awareness creates local support and citizens’ participation is a precondition for societal improvement.

Keeping those principles in mind, we start from within. E-Net promotes gender equality within our members: gender issues are incorporated in all policy discussions and we promote sexual orientation and gender identity expression among members. Looking outwards, we use a gender-responsive approach in our advocacy campaigns.

As a result of our work, we have submitted an alternative budget proposal to education agencies and the legislative forum for evaluation of the Gender and Development (GAD) plans, budget, and implementation.

We have also proposed additional budget so the agency in charge can carry on evaluations of the curriculum and textbooks using a gender lens.

Increasing availability and access to information in Liberia

Liberia ranks first among post-war countries with the number of out-of-school children at 21.36%.

Successive crises including the intermittent civil war (1988-2003), the Ebola Crisis (2014-2015) and the current coronavirus pandemic, have created significant demographic and development challenges to girls’ education rights and gender equality.

In response, in 2006, the government adopted the National Policy on Girls’ Education (NPGE) which recognizes gender disparities in the education sector, the need for the sector to prioritize gender mainstreaming and take affirmative action for girls’ education. Despite its adoption fourteen years, the NGPE is yet to be effectively implemented.

Three women-led, women rights organizations (Helping Our People Excel - HOPE, CAREFOUND Liberia and the Paramount Young Women Initiative - PAYOWI), came together to help policy makers and civil society organizations contribute to the effective implementation of the NGPE, and so the Educate HER campaign was born.

Through a newly built coalition of national-level organizations, Educate HER has identified one of its main focus as improving the availability of and access to information and disaggregated data on girls’ education through the development of several tools.

For example, this platform with county level disaggregated data on enrollment, out of school, female teachers, attendance, retention, and completion as well as trend trackers of financial investment and adequate systems seeks to help in evidence-based policy making.

Along with the data, the website serves as a repository of policy briefs and mapping documents on issues such as equity in education budgeting, national budget cycles for the NGPE among others.

Sharing learning and strengthening collective advocacy in West Africa

In West and Central Africa, 39% of girls are married before the age of 18. Six of the ten countries with the highest prevalence of child marriage in the world are in the region, including Niger at 76% and Burkina Faso at 52%.

The security crisis in the Sahel has further reduced girls’ chances to continue their education leading to the closure of over 2,000 schools in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso even before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Increased responsibilities at home, lack of appropriate infrastructure to manage their periods at school, school-related gender-based violence, poor education quality, poverty, adolescent pregnancy and child marriage, also cause girls to drop out of school at the critical time of transition between primary and secondary school.

Girls Not Brides is a global partnership of more than 1,600 civil society organizations from over 100 countries committed to ending child marriage and ensuring girls can reach their full potential.

Our Education Out Loud-funded project targets the implementation of laws, policies and programs which improve girls’ access and retention in quality education and contribute to ending child marriage in Francophone West and Central Africa. We work with two end child marriage coalitions in Burkina Faso (CONAMEB) and Niger (National Platform to End Child Marriage).

We seek to ensure youth and women have a leading role in advocacy to end child marriage and promote girls’ education.

At the national and local levels, our partners support increased involvement and leadership of youth- and women-led civil society organizations in the work of the coalitions.

At the regional level we focus on youth-led research on girls’ education and child marriage in crisis contexts (Covid-19 and insecurity), promote the participation of youth- and women-led organizations in key regional events and we lead advocacy campaigns and learning events.

Our work is having an impact

In the past 3 years, Education Out Loud grantees like us have been instrumental in contributing to policy changes related to improving girls education, and our research has been used to enhance policy dialogue.

For example, in Somalia, the National Education Coalition (NEC) contributed to the approval of the Gender Education Policy.

In Cote d’Ivoire, the NEC was a main actor behind the approval of the National Strategy for the Reintegration of Pregnant Girls/Mothers into the Ivorian education system, and in Tanzania, the research on that state of girls' education was used to influence re-entry policy for teen mothers.

With Education Out Loud funded activities going strong until the end of 2023, stay tuned to learn how these activities are further impacting the right to education for girls.