If you invest in a girl, she becomes a woman and she invests in everyone else.” Melinda Gates delivered this call to action from the World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings in April 2017. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim echoed her sentiments.
130 million girls are out-of-school today. Across the world, barriers persist that keep girls out of school: early marriage, affordability, and safety, to name a few.
A key ingredient to empowering girls through education rests at the local level. Involving girls and their families is the first step to sustainable change, as Claver Gatete, Rwanda’s Minister of Finance, noted.
When girls are not in school, they are less likely to be empowered to make decisions over their own lives. As Marie-Claude Bibeau, the Minister of International Development from Canada remarked, the prerogative is to invest in girls and women. “Give them the opportunity to develop their full potential. It is an investment, not an expense.”
Image: UNESCO