Girl Child Education

Girls from Shika Dam. Only 47% of the girls ages 6-19 in Shika Dam had ever attended primary school and far less (4%) have ever attended junior secondary or secondary school. The Girl Child Education Program is working to get and keep girls in school

The Population and Reproductive Health Partnership (PRHP) is working with parents girls and communities to improve access to girl child education.

The NIH-funded collaboration between the Bixby Center for Population Health and Sustainability and Ahmadu Bello University-has received a grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to use the participatory research infrastructure developed by the PRHP to work with parents and community leaders to:

• offer incentives to increase girls’ public school enrollment and attendance and boost retention rates;
• establish “Safe Space” girls’ clubs in the homes of trusted religious or community leaders in which adolescent girls can openly discuss their reproductive health concerns, acquire valuable life skills, and link with local health services;
• create an innovative, teen centered curriculum for these clubs that emphasizes life skills such as informed reproductive health decision making, literacy, numeracy, and income generation;
• conduct rigorous operations research on the effectiveness of these strategies