Download 2010 Camfed Impact Report PDF - United Nations Girls ...

CAMFED IMPACT REPORT
Child protection at the center
of educational access and quality
Camfed places the protection of the child at the center of
policy and practice for girls’ education, and recognizes that
the safety of schools is fundamental to the consideration
of quality and access in education. Camfed’s impact on
girls’ enrollment, retention, pass rates, gender equity in
schools, and adolescent pregnancy rates demonstrates
the systemic change made possible when child protection
is a non-negotiable and central tenet of girls’ education.
Camfed-supported girls have consistently achieved a
retention rate above 90% at secondary school; and in
Zambia, for example, anecdotal evidence points to a
decline in pregnancy rates in well-established partner
schools over time. The evidence is that all such benefits
continue to improve the longer Camfed works in a district.
Camfed’s approach to child protection creates a
continuum of care concerned with a girl’s daily experience
inside school, and within the wider social context of her
life as part of the community. Camfed attaches the highest
importance to child protection as the center of its own
governance practices to mitigate against risks to girls; and
engages with the highest levels of authority to influence
policymaking around child protection.
Camfed’s first emphasis is on children’s inclusion in
the school system, recognizing that the experience of
exclusion has a profoundly negative impact on a child’s
well-being and future. By the end of 2009, Camfed had
provided:
• 1,065,710 children in 2,295 of the poorest communities in
rural Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi with
access to a safer, improved school environment;
• 500,948 of these children received financial support to go
to school;
• 42,184 girls received comprehensive support throughout
the full four or five years of their secondary level education
— the level at which most girls are lost to education
through poverty, but where the highest gains in terms of
future health and prosperity are achieved.
1,065,710
Up to the end of 2009, Camfed provided 1,065,710
children in communities of rural Africa with access to a
safer, improved school environment.
12