Why Girls?
GLAMI focuses on girls because girls are especially vulnerable to dropping out of school, however when girls have the tools to stay in school, the result is socially-responsible women who secure better jobs, raise healthier families, and create lasting positive change in their communities.
Only 39 % of Tanzanian girls go to secondary school, and only 3% to tertiary education.
Girls who are fortunate enough to enroll in secondary school face significant financial, cultural, and environmental challenges that undermine their ability to make the most of the secondary school opportunity. As a result, many young women fail to complete secondary school. Once they reach the workforce, women are much less likely to occupy leadership positions, and they earn significantly less than their male counterparts.
Only 2/3 of Tanzanian girls who start secondary school will go on to complete secondary school.
Obstacles to finishing secondary school include poverty (88%), pregnancy (60%), and early marriage (55%). When a girl drops out of school, not only is her healthy adolescent development and transition into productive adulthood impacted, but she is exposed to challenges she is ill-equipped to overcome.
However, 97% of Kisa Scholars go on to tertiary education, and Kisa Scholars score 10% higher than the national average on the final exam of secondary school.
For each additional year of secondary school, a girl completes, her earning potential increases by up to 25%.
For each additional year of secondary school a girl completes, her quality of life increases markedly. Her lifetime earnings, her ability to direct her own reproductive choices, her daughters’ educational attainment – she is empowered to improve all of these with additional schooling.
Girls with secondary schooling are up to 6 times less likely to marry as children, and have more control over the timing and number of children they bear.
Girls with secondary education are more likely to delay having sex, more likely to delay their first pregnancy, and less likely to be subject to emotional, physical, and sexual violence. Educating girls also results in decreased child mortality (because girls become more well-informed about reproductive health and medical care) and a reduction in HIV/AIDS rates.
Increasing the number of women with a secondary education by 1% can raise a county’s annual per capita economic growth by 0.37%.
For most young women, completing school and obtaining a certificate is not enough to guarantee an improved quality of life and the opportunity for personal fulfillment. Without ‘soft’ skills like confidence, resilience and motivation, many will remain disempowered in their everyday lives. GLAMI looks beyond individual academic achievement to ensure that girls are well-placed to become empowered women who will ultimately change Tanzanian society for the better.
HOW GLAMI HELPS GIRLS
GLAMI works to address the issue of poor educational outcomes for adolescent girls in Tanzania at two key stages of their development – lower secondary school (ages approximately 12-18) and upper secondary school (ages approx 16 – 20).
