According to UNESCO, 122 million girls around the world are out of school, and in historically low-income countries only 66 girls complete upper secondary school for every 100 boys. Enrollment is only a first step, because the World Bank and UNICEF estimate that seven in 10 children in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple text by age 10. Closing those gaps for any one girl starts with an education that builds strong literacy skills in the early grades, the foundation for all later learning. In secondary school, life skills then equip her to make informed choices about her own future, and steady support from mentors and from a family that expects her to finish school helps her act on those choices. Room to Read is a nonprofit organization that has worked on children's literacy and girls' education since 2000, benefiting more than 60 million children across 29 geographies. Through our Girls' Education Program, we combine life skills education with mentorship and family engagement for adolescent girls, and our gender equality programming has benefited more than 4.5 million adolescents to date. The sections below follow that argument in order, beginning with why an additional year of school changes a girl's prospects, then what pushes girls out of school, which life skills help a girl respond to those pressures and how our Girls' Education Program brings skills and support together. Schooling that builds strong literacy skills is the foundation, and each additional year a girl spends in school compounds into her later income and into the choices open to her family. The World Bank estimates that each additional year of schooling raises a girl's later earnings by about 20 percent, a return that keeps building across her working life. Higher earnings raise household income over time, which is one reason the benefits of a girl's education tend to extend to her children's schooling. Families who see those returns often begin to treat a daughter's education as an investment worth protecting. Additional schooling also matters for adult literacy, where the gap between women and men remains wide. According to UNESCO, women and girls make up two-thirds of the more than 773 million adults who cannot read, and each girl who completes school helps close a gap that has persisted across generations. The returns to schooling depend on a girl completing it, and girls most often leave school for reasons that have little to do with their ability. The most common barriers are the risk of forced marriage, the cost of fees and supplies, long or unsafe routes to class and the household work a family expects of a daughter as she grows older. Family expectations run through each of these barriers, because a family weighing what school costs against what a daughter contributes at home is in effect deciding whether her education continues. Each barrier arises from the circumstances around a girl, so each one can be reduced when she has the skills to speak for her own education and adults nearby who support her decision to continue. Because the barriers to finishing school ease when a girl can speak for her own education, our Girls' Education Program builds five life skills in secondary school, on the literacy foundation laid in the early grades. The five are collaboration, resilience, leadership, decision-making and critical thinking. These five skills equip adolescents with the tools to meet the challenges of young adulthood and to make informed choices about school, work and marriage, through a gender-aware lens. Our life skills programming also helps adolescents recognize their own worth and build the confidence to keep learning, because academic skills alone leave young people underprepared for a rapidly changing world. At Room to Read, we teach the five skills through a structured life skills curriculum, delivered in regular sessions and lessons that use practical life skills activities such as goal-setting, story circles and role-model interviews. Each activity gives a girl the chance to practice a skill with her peers before she faces the same kind of choice at home. The table below sets out what each of the five life skills helps a girl do. Life skill What it helps a girl do Collaboration work with peers and mentors toward a shared goal Resilience recover from a setback and stay in school Leadership take initiative in her school, family and community Decision-making weigh choices about study, work and marriage Critical thinking question an assumption and plan realistically The life skills curriculum and the sessions that deliver it are designed and run by people from the communities where the girls live, which reflects how Room to Read is organized as a whole. Nearly 90 percent of our team is based in the countries where we work, and local nationals lead our community-based operations from program design through implementation. We have worked this way on the belief that World Change Starts with Educated Children®. Our locally led teams work at considerable scale, and in 2025 alone our programs actively benefited 17 million children. The girls' education work described in this article spans 14 geographies, from Nepal and India to Tanzania and Vietnam, with community-based staff delivering it in each one. Independent reviewers have recognized the quality of our work across all programs, which has earned 18 four-star ratings from Charity Navigator and a place in HundrED's Hall of Fame. Our Girls' Education Program answers the barriers of cost, forced marriage and family expectations by pairing the life skills curriculum with steady support around each girl. Alongside the curriculum, each girl receives mentorship from a woman in her community, and our staff engage her family and her school in her education. Where fees or supplies stand in the way, the program also provides material support. Mentorship runs through the same life skills sessions, where a mentor from the girls' own community works with the same group of girls throughout the school year. She tracks who is attending and steps in early when a girl is at risk of leaving school, and she works with families as they weigh the cost of school against the work a daughter does at home. Working with the same mentor over time also turns the life skills into a regular practice for each girl. Our program data show that girls who build life skills with steady mentorship go on to advance through school and beyond it. In recent years, over 99 percent of girls enrolled in our Girls' Education Program have advanced to the next grade, and more than 80 percent of graduates secure work or enroll in tertiary education within five years of graduation. The relationships built through the program also held when schools closed in 2020, and 95 percent of girls in our program returned to the classroom once their schools reopened. A recent study of 34,000 girls in our program in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh adds a measure of how participants themselves view the curriculum. All of the girls interviewed described their life skills education as beneficial, a perception finding that sits alongside the outcome data above. Our work follows the order in which children build these foundational learning skills. Through our Literacy Program, we focus on literacy in the early grades, which builds a foundation for all future learning, and through our Girls' Education Program we focus on life skills in secondary school, which equip adolescents for the challenges of young adulthood and for making informed choices about their own futures through a gender-aware lens. Bringing life skills education to more girls depends on partnership with governments, so we collaborate with ministries of education to bring what works into national school systems. In Cambodia, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport has adopted our life skills curriculum for boys for Grades 7–9 nationwide. According to the Global Education Monitoring Report, only one in six countries is on track to meet its education goals by 2030. Progress at that pace calls for change across whole school systems, so support for Room to Read invests in the systems, partnerships and infrastructure that let what works reach girls at scale. Girls' education is a long-term effort, and the evidence on which combinations of skills and support help girls most continues to grow. Our email subscribers receive our program results and new research on girls' education first. Sign up below to receive Room to Read program results and new research on girls' education as they are published.Why does an extra year of school change a girl's future?
What stops girls from finishing school?
Which life skills does a girl need in secondary school?
How the skills are taught
What Room to Read is
Scale and credibility
How Room to Read addresses girls' education
How mentors and families support each girl
What the results show
How literacy in the early grades leads into life skills
How the work reaches more girls
How to stay informed
