EducationForward |
The EducationForward Internship and Scholarship Program was launched in 2013 to provide young women and girls in under-served communities with access to secondary education, professional internships, and the opportunity to expand their training in photography, documentary video, and information technology.
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Access to education is recognized as a basic human right as well as a significant factor in breaking the cycle of poverty and improving quality of life for children, communities, and countries. Despite this, millions of girls and women around the world are disproportionately denied the opportunity to attend school and pursue education and training outside the home. Of the approximately 75 million children who are currently not in school, the majority are girls. In developing countries and countries with strict cultural and religious gender roles, this gap is much wider. In addition, nearly three-quarters of girls out of school are from excluded groups such as ethnic minorities, isolated clans, and very poor households, even though these groups represent only 20 percent of the world’s population. Opening classroom doors to girls around the world not only brings the immediate benefit of individual empowerment, but is also seen as the best investment in a country’s development. Access to education provides girls with self-confidence and is critical in the development of essential leadership skills that empower women to take active, decision-making roles in their homes and communities. Children of educated women are also more likely to go to school, contributing to poverty reduction for generations to come. Each year of school a girl receives produces measurable benefits. An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent and an extra year of secondary school increases earnings by 15 to 25 percent. Women with formal education are also much more likely to use reliable family-planning methods, delay marriage and childbearing, and have fewer and healthier babies and have substantially lower risk of contracting HIV. The impact of investing in girls' education is already being documented and investments in secondary school education for girls yields especially high dividends. In African countries, the child of a woman who has not been to school has a one-in-five chance of dying before age 5, but a child whose mother attended five years of school has a 40 percent lower mortality risk. In China, eight years of school enables a girl to become a teacher, after which she is eligible for additional training at no cost: Eight years of schooling can literally lift a girl out of poverty. Adapted from the ITVS Discussion Guide "Education" created for the documentary film Half the Sky, written by Allison Milewski for ITVS, PBS, and Show of Force Productions. |
