Mobile schools acclimatise to educate girls in rural Kenya

Kagondu Njagi at the Thomson Reuters Foundation:  At 16 years of age, Nagirasia Lengima is already a mother of two. But parenthood doesn't stop her from indulging in her latest passion: school. Like a growing number of girls from nomadic communities in northern Kenya, Lengima is defying cultural prejudices - and climate pressures - by getting an education at a mobile school.

Run by non-profit groups, the schools bring learning to girls whose families are forced to move around the region to survive. In Laisamis village, Marsabit County, at a school run by the Nairobi-based development charity Adeso, it is Lengima's turn to demonstrate what she has picked up from the morning session.

After playing around with some numbers on the chalkboard, she elicits cheers from the 59 other pupils in the class as she produces the answer with a double stroke. "Mathematics and Kiswahili are my favourite subjects," said Lengima. "I want to go into business in the future."

But circumstances are conspiring against her. Teachers have largely abandoned the area to escape sporadic attacks by Islamist militant group Al Shabaab. And increasingly erratic weather often pushes pastoralist families away from their settlements in search of water and grazing, limiting children's access to formal education.

Temperatures in Northern Kenya can reach over 30 degrees Celsius, and the region regularly suffers from both drought and heavy rainfall. Adeso works with the weather to give girls access to informal schooling which otherwise may have been impossible....

Christopher Michel took this photo of a Masai girl doing math problems in 2013, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Girls can drive economic growth and social stability

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs: Adolescent girls living in rural areas of the developing world have untapped potential to drive economic development and help meet the world’s future food supply needs, says a new report released by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. Girls Grow: A Vital Force in Rural Economies identifies opportunities to empower rural girls to spur economic and social change in their families and communities. Catherine Bertini, 2003 World Food Prize Laureate, serves as the publication’s lead author and chair of the project that produced the report.

Adolescent girls must be a key part of successful agricultural and rural economic development strategies, as they are many of the world’s future farmers, rural leaders, decision makers, and mothers. Rural adolescent girls face a triple challenge due to their location, gender, and age.

The report calls on national governments and bilateral donors to provide services and opportunities that both improve girls’ lives and equip them to be successful economic contributors. Recommended actions include ensuring girls complete secondary school, increasing access to vocational training, eliminating barriers girls face in the work place, building girls’ capacity as decision makers, enhancing health services information and delivery to girls in rural areas, and keeping girls safe.

Special attention is paid to how girls uniquely contribute to agriculture. Women in the developing world make up 43 percent of the agricultural labor force. Girls help with these responsibilities and handle, with their mothers, virtually all domestic chores, including fetching water and carrying firewood....

A call for better integration of the needs of adolescent girls in climate change and disaster risk reduction

Prevention Web: Plan International’s new report, Weathering the Storm: Adolescent Girls and Climate Change, calls for better integration of the needs of adolescent girls in climate change and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes.

The findings presented in the report are based on interviews with girls involved in Plan International’s programmes in Ethiopia and Bangladesh. We were particularly keen to learn from girls themselves how climate change is impacting their lives, and what they think policy makers should do differently.

The impacts of climate change – whether they are gradual changes in weather patterns aggravating chronic drought and food security, or the more rapid onset emergencies such as cyclones and floods – are different for different populations. While inevitably children everywhere are badly affected, the report illustrates how girls, in particular, are bearing the greatest burden. The report evidences how increased climate stress is exposing a growing number of adolescent girls to very specific risks:

More girls and women are dying during disasters;
An increasing number are enduring early and forced marriages; and
More girls are being exposed to sexual violence and the curtailment of their education.

A young girl arrives in Juba on January 9, 2011, after a 3-week journey by barge from Kosti in northern Sudan. She is part of a group returning home to southern Sudan in anticipation of the referendum results. Credit: Jenn Warren, USAID