Room to Read’s Gender Equality Portfolio supports all adolescents, particularly girls, to develop life skills that promote gender equality.
Gender Equality
Gender Equality in Education
Education offers critical life skills for improving gender equality. The World Bank lists evidence that girls’ education brings a wide range of benefits - not only for girls, but also for their children, communities and society.
Girls’ education is the best investment a country can make to grow its economy. The global cost of failing to educate young women is $10 trillion, annually.
Girls’ education boosts public health exponentially. If all mothers completed primary education, maternal deaths would reduce by two-thirds and 1.7 million children would be saved by malnutrition.
Yet, 66 girls complete upper secondary school for every 100 boys in historically low-income countries. In many countries, this is when girls’ enrollment drops sharply due to harmful social and cultural norms.
Room to Read's Approach to Gender Equality
Our program is one of the longest interventions of its kind, providing support from Grades 6 – 12. Within our Girls' Education Program, we help girls develop their power as positive change agents through:
Room to Read Girls’ Education Program helps girls build the skills they need to succeed in school and negotiate key life decisions. Our curriculum focuses on helping girls develop five key life skills: Our curriculum also builds knowledge in specific areas such as sexual and reproductive health, financial literacy, climate change, safety and rights, and gender norms.
Life Skills Classes
Essential to our Girls’ Education Program are our local, in-country teams that hold trusted relationships with communities and are typically from the community in which they work. This local presence enables Room to Read to better meet the needs of students and quickly respond during crises that create barriers to learning. Room to Read engages with families and communities by hosting workshops, events, and other activities to raise awareness about social norms, expectations and challenges that can significantly affect a girl’s ability to stay in school, the importance of education and the resources that exist to support girls’ learning. Community Engagement
We know that mentorship contributes to academic and life success in historically low-income communities. Our Girls’ Education Program matches cohorts of girls with a local mentor or teacher from their community who advocates on their behalf, ensures they stay in school, participate in life skills activities, and navigate the challenges of adolescence - with the knowledge and ability to negotiate their own life choices, both personally and professionally. Mentorship & Peer Support
Room to Read’s gender equality programming goes further as we partner with governments and other organizations. We adapt our programming to respond to adolescents’ needs across multiple countries, regions and cultural contexts. We offer a wide range of materials and approaches that can be leveraged to benefit more adolescents more quickly with life skills content and mentoring that promote gender equality. Room to Read is poised to implement our gender equality programming at scale as we integrate our approach and life skills curriculum in public schools and long-term community programming and work alongside ministries of education in several countries to adapt and integrate key parts of our life skills curriculum at the systems level. SCALING GENDER EQUALITY PROGRAMS >> Accessibility & Partnerships
What Sets Us Apart
Room to Read recognizes the role that boys and men play in promoting a more gender equitable world. Promoting gender equality and attitudes among boys can profoundly improve their life outcomes as well as the lives of their future partners and children. We are deepening our commitment to gender equality by offering life skills programming for boys that provides a safe space for them to question harmful gender norms and practice gender equal behaviors. The role of boys and men in promoting gender equality
She Creates Change
We’ve gone further to develop the delivery of our life skills curriculum through a variety of multimedia channels to reach every adolescent girl in the world with the tools she needs to create change. Our multimedia storytelling initiative, She Creates Change, seeks to support all adolescent girls in the world with the content that equips and inspires them to create positive change in their lives – delivering curriculum packages that align with stories presented through books, audio stories and film.
She Creates Change | Official Trailer
Our Results
Room to Read has operated the Girls’ Education Program in 10 countries (Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Italy, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zambia) and has supported over 3.4 million girls to date, changing gender paradigms in communities and strengthening support for gender equality, the results of which will carry forward for generations.
We will not stop until every child, regardless of the circumstances they were born into, can access quality education and unlock their full potential.
Will you help us?
