Plan International USA, a non-profit organization focused on ending poverty, recently received a $12-million donation to fund a new program to help young girls around the world pursue an education and feel safe within their communities.
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), around 130 million girls worldwide between the ages of six to 17 remain out of school. Additionally, 15 million girls of primary-school age, half of them in sub-Saharan Africa, will never enter a classroom.
Not only do many girls struggle to receive an education, they also experience high rates of violence. One in three women are effected by violence worldwide and 35 percent have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence, the World Bank reports.
The Plan International program, GirlEngage, aims to reduce those numbers by partnering with girls around the world to understand their own specific needs and issues faced within their country. Dr. Molly Fitzgerald, senior technical adviser in health at Plan International USA, wants girls to not only be beneficiaries of the program but also be physically part of their own development.
“A lot of organizations are saying that they are working with girls, but we are really taking this to an extreme,” she said. “We are actually not just giving a service to it but working with them, partnering with them to co-design, co-create and co-implement solutions that are coming from them.”
Plan International is in the process of implementing pilot programs in Senegal and Zimbabwe to help change the lives of adolescent girls ages 10 to 18.
