0.2 Part two: special topics  (Page 23/39)

Benefits

Education is vital to ensuring a better quality of life for all children and a better world for all people. In country after country,educating girls yields spectacular social benefits for the current generation and those to come:

• An educated girl tends to marry later and have fewer children.
• The children she does have will be more likely to survive; they will be better nourished and better educated.
• She will be more productive at home and better paid in the workplace. "For each additional year a girl is in school, her wages as an adult riseby approximately 15 percent." (UNICEF, Benefits of Girls Education, 2001)
• She will be better able to protect herself against HIV/AIDS .
• She will be able to assume a more active role in social, economic, and political decision-making throughout her life.

Case studies

I am now in Grade two. I am 15 years old and have been married twice, at the ages of 10 and 12. I did not stay with my second husband. My cousinadvised me to go to school. I am the first child in my family and have three sisters and two brothers. I like my lessons, I stood seventh among 120students. My younger sister was married, but because of my advice she now goes to school. My parents are not really willing to send me toschool. Nevertheless, I want to continue and will advise other girls to do the same. - Tadfe Tsega, Ethiopia

"In Africa, there are 24 million girls out of primary school. And in 22 African countries, boys outnumber girls in primary schoolby at least five percentage points. In countries besieged by HIV/AIDS, the very fact that girls do not go to school can be life threatening. More than 40percent of women without education have no knowledge of AIDS, compared to 8 percent of women with post-primary schooling."

(Carol Bellamy, UNICEF, 8/15/2001)

"Uganda provides a tremendous example of leadership in this area with its policy of free primary education and its emphasis ongender parity. Another example of leadership comes from Malawi. When the country made primary education free in 1994, net enrollment surged fromless than 50 percent to more than 80 percent."

(Carol Bellamy, UNICEF, 8/15/2001)

"It is well known that an educated woman has fewer and healthier children, and is more likely to send her children to school. InBrazil, for instance, illiterate women have an average of 6.5 children, whereas those with secondary education have 2.5 children. The child of aZambian mother with a primary education has a 25 percent better chance of survival than a child of a mother with no education."

(World Education Forum, Women and Girls: Education, not Discrimination 2000)

"Literacy also gives women a voice. In Bangladesh, women with a secondary education are three times more likely to attend apolitical meeting than are women with no education."

(World Education Forum, Women and Girls: Education, not Discrimination 2000)

The high cost of formal education has prevented girls in many countries from getting school education. Fifteen-year-oldAlamassou from Togo was no different. But that all changed for her though, when CARE and its local partners created two new schools in Alamassou'scommunity.