Improving Educational Opportunities for Girls (4)

Business Communities can …

sponsor school-level competitions that encourage improved access, participation and persistence for girls;
develop community-based child care programmes;
support community-based maintenance programmes to improve routes that girls use to walk to school;
build latrines and other infrastructural improvements at schools;
sponsor community-based programmes on how parents can support their daughters’ education;
develop programmes to provide library books, sports equipment, exercise books, pencils and other supplies to schools;
sponsor scholarship programmes for girls;
pay for advertising (e.g., billboards, newspaper advertisements) with a slogan that represents the goal and vision of girls’ education (e.g. little by little we will go far);
encourage and sponsor employees and staff to become involved in efforts to promote girls’ education;
provide experts to work with the ministry and schools to improve the curriculum, instruction and training;
place the slogan on their company vehicles (… supports girls’ education);
sponsor coupon books that can be sold to raise funds for girls’ education -- (e.g. companies/businesses offer coupons for services at a reduced rate for the people who purchase the coupon books);
assist in the development of labour-saving technologies at the community level.

establish community-based child care programmes to free girls from the responsibility of caring for younger siblings;
ensure that routes children use to walk to school are safe and well-maintained;
assign chaperones to accompany girls to school;
use participatory exercises to determine why school-age children, particularly girls, are not in school and propose actions to overcome constraints;
introduce labour-saving technologies to free up girls’ time;
ensure that the school is secure for girls;
provide adequate and sanitary latrines;
install a birth registration programme to keep track of school-age girls.

IMPROVING EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR GIRLS