Girls on the Go

Around the world, about 122 million girls1 are currently not attending school – including 12 million children2 who never enrolled and will likely live out their lives having never set foot in a classroom. A majority of these out-of-school children are girls. Research3 shows that proximity to school is one of the most important determinants of primary school enrollment. In low and middle-income countries, the long walk to school amplifies the already considerable challenges facing rural girls including poverty, insecurity and violence, and social norms hostile or indifferent to girls’ education. IN ZAMBIA children walk an average of more than 90 minutes to get to school each day.4 The walk can leave girls exhausted and vulnerable to harassment and assault and can deepen their family’s poverty by preventing them from helping on the family farm or making ends meet before or after school. Due to daily chores such as fetching water and fuel (girls are traditionally responsible for fetching water and fuel in rural areas), girls may be forced to make part of their journey before dawn or after dusk. In the face of these challenges, many parents, fearful for their daughters’ safety or concerned about making ends meet, pull their daughters out of school. According to UNESCO5, just 1 percent of the poorest girls in low-income countries complete secondary school. This was exacerbated by COVID-19, which significantly increased adolescent pregnancies, child marriage, and pressure on girls to help their families who slid deeper into poverty.

GETTING GIRLS TO SCHOOL

Working to remove the obstacles to education not only transforms girls’ futures but also the world.Until recently, governments and funders working to increase girls’ enrollment and attendance focused their efforts on three levers: building more schools, lowering school fees, and conditional cash transfers to families. Researchers6 have found that building more schools can be effective, but in many rural areas can lead to an educational model based on sub-scale one-room schoolhouses incapable of delivering high-quality education. A robust global body of evidence has found that getting girls to enroll in school and keeping them attending for as long as possible is one of the most powerful levers for empowering girls. Educating girls can have a number of positive impacts, including: •Higher future earnings•Reduced exploitative practices such as child marriage•Improved health outcome•Sustainable economic growthResearch from the World Bank7 has shown that reducing distances and addressing transport to school for girls increases attendance and decreases the likelihood of dropping out. 

EVIDENCE THAT BICYCLES HELP GIRLS GET TO SCHOOL AND STAY IN SCHOOL

There is increasing recognition, based on data from Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Colombia, and India,8 and a high-quality randomized control trial in Zambia, that bicycles can serve as an effective conditional non-cash transfer to help girls get to school and keep them there. World Bicycle Relief has documented a similar impact in its bicycles for education programs around the world. To date, these programs have distributed specially-designed Buffalo bicycles to more than 280,000 students, 70 percent of whom are girls.For the last ten years the Ministry of Education in Zambia has partnered with World Bicycle Relief to help 53,900 rural girls get to school quickly and safely through a cost-effective, locally managed program. Girls enrolled in the program sign “study to own” contracts with their community, pledging to complete their studies in return for use and eventual ownership of the bicycle. In addition to providing rural girls with commutes of more than three kilometers each way with specially designed bicycles, the program trains local mechanics to keep those bicycles in the service of the girls for years to come. 

A rigorous independent randomized control trial and other subsequent evaluations of the Zambia program, have found that girls provided with a bicycle:

• Were 19 percent less likely to drop out after owning a bicycle for two years• Reduced their absenteeism by 28 percent• Cut their commute time of nearly two hours each way by 33 percent, saving more than one hour a day•Reduced the number of days they were late to school by 66 percent• Scored higher on mathematics assessment• Reported feeling more in control of the decisions affecting their lives• Ranked themselves higher academically and had a greater belief in their potential to succeed in life• Experienced 22 percent less sexual harassment and/or teasing on their way to school