Working for Women Worldwide - Embassy of the United States

Through its sizeable public and private contributions
to the United Nations Children’s Fund
(UNICEF), the United States also supports
UNICEF’s education activities, which reach millions
of girls. For instance, some of UNICEF’s advocacy
publications have focused on girls’ education; and
UNICEF has used sports to promote girls’ enrollment
in schools in priority countries. It helped three
million children enroll in school in Afghanistan after
the war. It is working to do the same for an estimated
one million children in Liberia, where it has distributed
over 7,000 school supply kits and is training
20,000 teachers. And in Iraq, UNICEF delivered
hundreds of school-in-a-box kits to schools; it assisted
in the holding of final exams after the war; and it has
been involved in rehabilitating schools.
The U.S. government also is focusing its efforts
on women and children in some of the poorest and
neediest places in the world. It has established its
Equity in the Classroom program, for example, in
Bangladesh, Benin, El Salvador, Haiti, Morocco,
Peru, South Africa, and Uganda, among other countries.
Administered by the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), this program offers
training and technical support in countries where educating
girls is an explicit national priority.
In 2002, President Bush announced a five-year
African Education Initiative to help countries in that
region improve primary school education through
training of teachers, providing textbooks and other
learning materials, supporting community involvement,
and offering scholarships for girls. U.S.
embassies in some 30 African countries identified the
girls who were eligible for these scholarships. In addition,
more than 20,000 teachers have received training
in countries such as Benin, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali,
Senegal, and South Africa.
USAID works to promote basic education for
girls as well as boys in order to reduce poverty, improve
health and social well-being, and sustain economic
growth. USAID’s education programs for girls target
both the lack of access and the poor quality of resources
that hinder girls’ participation and achievement in
school. This approach involves using multiple strategies
to address barriers to girls’ education, including
engaging influential citizens and organizations within
the public and private sectors to support girls’ education
and promoting “girl-friendly” national education
policies.
For example, a USAID program to raise the
acceptance of girls in the classroom in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala,
Guinea, Mali, Morocco, and Peru has had a number
of successes, among them the establishment of a universal
law for the enrollment of girls under 18 in Peru,
and the awarding of 47,500 scholarships through the
private sector to girls in Guatemala. A thousand
handbooks, funded by USAID and distributed in
Ghana, give guidance to school administrators and
communities on ways to encourage girls to attend and
stay in school. In El Salvador, 15 issues of a children’s
two-page insert in the country’s leading daily newspaper
were devoted to promoting education for girls.
To ensure girls and boys go to school rather than
sweatshops, in 2002 the United States established the
McGovern-Dole International Food for Education
and Child Nutrition Program. Its funds help millions
of malnourished girls and boys stay in school where
they will receive nutritious meals. In low-income
countries, the program provides for donations of U.S.
agricultural products, as well as financial and technical
assistance for school food and maternal and child
nutrition projects. U.S. implementing partners for
McGovern-Dole include governments, nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), and the World Food
Program (WFP) through its global Food for
Education initiative. The WFP initiative promotes
nonformal education for women and adolescent girls
and provides a monthly oil ration to teachers. In 2004,
McGovern-Dole funding for the WFP was used in
Cote d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Kenya, Mozambique, and
Malawi.
As these examples show, agencies across the U.S.
government offer a variety of programs that contribute
to its goal of expanding educational opportunities for
all people at every level and of all ages and backgrounds
throughout the world. It is a global effort that,
in the words of Assistant Secretary of State for
Educational and Cultural Affairs Patricia Harrison,
Top, class at the Agadir Secondary Girls’ School in Baghdad’s
Saydiya neighborhood. Center left, Florence Nabiyar, left, of
Afghanistan and Arezo Kohistani. The two were part of a group
that received scholarships to study at American universities in
2003. Center middle, a student from the Hala Bint Khuwaylid
Secondary Girls’ School in Baghdad with her USAID-funded
school bag. Center right, Iraqi Fulbright scholars on February 2,
2004, applaud remarks by State Department Assistant Secretary
for Educational and Cultural Affairs Patricia Harrison. Bottom,
a USAID literacy program participant in Sierra Leone.
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