Why girls?
“Investing in girls is the most powerful investment for development.”
United Nations Department of Economics & Social Affairs
1.6 million primary and secondary school aged girls are out of school in Ethiopia.*
That’s nearly 2 in 10 girls in Ethiopia. As girls enter adolescence, they are more likely to drop out of school as a result of a diverse range of issues, including early marriage, early pregnancy, increased responsibilities at home, increased cost of school, food insecurity, limited access to hygiene facilities, sexual harassment and assault, gender bias, conflict, child labor, and lack of quality education for girls.
However, each year of education a girl completes catalyzes change for her future, her family, and her community. Education for girls means income, health, and agency for girls and their communities.
Educated Girls Change Everything
ECONOMY
If every girl around the world received 12 years of quality education, they could add up to $30 trillion to the global economy.*
On average, women with secondary school education earn almost twice as much as those with no education at all. Every additional year of school a girl completes increases her future earnings by 10-20%.* When women are able to earn an income, they invest 90% of their income back into their families, multiplying the impact of the investment made in their earning capacity.*
FAMILY PLANNING
Educated women have smaller, healthier, better educated families.*
Educating women saves lives. The World Bank found that universal secondary education for girls could virtually eliminate child marriage and as result substantially reduce the risk of early childbearing and maternal mortality for women. An extra year of girls’ education can reduce infant mortality by 5-10 percent.* When a woman gains four years more of education, her fertility drops by roughly one birth.*
HEALTH
Educated women are better able to seek and negotiate life saving health care for themselves and their children.*
Girls and women who are better educated are less likely to contract and spread HIV/AIDS and malaria because they have more knowledge about how they are contracted and practice safer behaviors.* Educated mothers are about 50% more likely to immunize their children than uneducated mothers are. Additionally, educated women are less likely to accept domestic violence and FGM.*
ENVIRONMENT
education for women increases crisis preparedness and Environmental Productivity.
Women with higher levels of education are able to better prepare for, adapt to, and bounce back from natural and economic disasters. Female education has emerged, as “the single most important social and economic factor associated with a reduction in vulnerability to natural disasters.”* Additionally, more productive farming due to increased female education accounted for 43% of the decline in malnutrition achieved between 1970 and 1995.*
How Do We Help Girls Design Futures of Their Choosing?
Girls Gotta Run is the only non-profit organization in Ethiopia dedicated to using the national sport of running as an innovative approach to creating safe spaces and expanding access to secondary school for vulnerable girls. The Girls Gotta Run Athletic Scholarship Program integrates education, athletics, life skills, and savings and entrepreneurship to invest in women and girls in Ethiopia.
Invest in girls today
Every additional year of school a girl completes increases her future earnings by 10-20%. That’s a smart investment.
