UNICEF Promotes Girls Education

04/24/2003

UNICEF Promotes Girls Education

"A wild goose never laid a tame egg."
–Irish proverb

UNICEF PROMOTES GIRLS EDUCATION

Go Girls! Education for Every Child is a global pledge campaign, led by UNICEF, in support of ensuring that every girl and boy receives a quality education. The campaign will run through to the end of 2005. This worldwide support will act as a signal to decision-makers—from parents to government ministers—of the importance of educating all children.

UNICEF's '25 by 2005' campaign is a major initiative to eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education in 25 priority countries by the year 2005. The campaign, which includes fifteen countries in Africa and Asian countries such as Afghanistan and Bangladesh, focuses on countries where girls' education is in a critical situation and progress would make a real impact. UNICEF will work closely with national governments and other partners to identify girls who are not in school. In each country, UNICEF will work with the government to mobilise new resources, build broad national consensus about the need to get girls to school, and help improve schools themselves to make them more welcoming to girls.

UNICEF has chosen a manageable number of countries and based its selection on criteria that looked for countries with one or more of the following: low enrolment rates for girls; gender gaps of more than 10% in primary education enrollment; countries with more than one million girls out of school; countries included on the Education For All Fast Track initiative; and countries hard hit by a range of crises that affect school opportunities for girls, such as HIV/AIDS and conflict.

For additional information on Go Girls!, you can go to the UNICEF web site (www.unicef.org), or contact Allison Hickling, UNICEF New York, at (212) 326-7224, [email protected].

The session, "Women, Care and Culture" at the 2003 World Forum on Early Care and Education, will explore how culture creates and sustains definitions of caring, with women from a variety of cultures discussing the realities of women caregivers in their nations. To see the full World Forum Program, go to http://www.childcareexchange.com/wf/program.php.

For more information about Exchange's magazine, books, and other products pertaining to ECE, go to www.ccie.com.