Equal access to quality education for disadvantaged girls and children in Malawi.

Girls’ education in Malawi is huge challenge: Malawi has one of the highest rates of child marriage in the world — more than 40% of its girls marry before 18.

And once they wed, many of these girls drop out of school. In addition, a crisis like the pandemic is leading even more girls to give up on school.

According to the research of 2020 “The situation of children and women in Malawi” by UNICEF, in Malawi over the 70% of the population live under the poverty line and approximately 63% of Children live in poverty. Child marriage remains high with 46.7% of girls married before the age of 18 and Malawi’s pre-term birth rate is the highest in the world, at 13%; 39% of children are engaged in child labour; 71% of children are subjected to violent discipline and 2% is the birth registration rate, under 5 years. One of the reason why it happens is the poor access to education especially for girls. The 32% of female youth of secondary age are out of school compared to 23% of male youth of the same age

AIM OF THE PROJECT:

This project is aiming to scale-up the innovation projects implemented in Balaka, where the Open Day schools are offering access to secondary education to many people and where the newly created Girls’ empowerment clubs are helping dozens of girls to be healthy, to gain access to and complete education cycles.